Carbon footprint
In 2007, working in partnership with the Carbon Trust, we have used an integrated approach to calculate CO2 equivalent (CO2e) across all of our UK activities to provide an indication of our ‘carbon footprint’. The results are in the table below. The CO2e figure now represents the combined CO2e associated with our energy use, water use, waste production, staff transport etc. rather than energy alone, although energy use still contributes the vast majority of this figure. This combined approach will be used for the reporting of CO2e in future. We plan to use the information to guide our carbon reduction strategy to achieve maximum carbon reductions through the most efficient possible use of our resources.
The Carbon Trust also made a number of recommendations that will be implemented over the coming years to minimise energy use through efficiencies in plant and equipment, and through changes in occupant behaviour and working practices.
We have also examined the various options for a robust offsetting strategy to address our residual emissions, and will examine the feasibility of implementing a partial or full offsetting strategy in future years, if appropriate. For now, however, our focus and investment will be very much aimed at minimising our footprint as far as we possibly can, through design, efficiency and effective management, rather than offsetting from an early stage.
| CSC | C&C | Head Office | Total (tCO2) 2007 | Total (tCO2) 2006 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Electricity | 40,203 | 4,721 | 589 | 45,512 | 47,675 |
| Gas | 5,221 | 2,068 | 159 | 7,449 | 8,995 |
| Transport | 807 | 0 | 263 | 1,070 | 1,070 |
| Water | 238 | 52 | 2 | 292 | 241 |
| Waste | -4,348 | 0 | 0 | -4,348 | -4,126 |
| District Heating | 171 | 0 | 0 | 171 | 187 |
| Total | 42,291 | 6,841 | 1,013 | 50,146 | 54,043 |
We continue to purchase much of our electricity from Climate Change Levy (CCL) exempt sources, though for carbon reporting purposes we have treated this in the same way as conventional electricity. However, as CCL exempt electricity represents around 95% of our total consumption, factoring the zero carbon effect of this into our carbon footprint calculations would theoretically reduce our footprint to approximately 12,000 tCO2e.
