Ecotricity’s journey to Net Zero
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You may not have heard of Net Zero Week but it’s the UK’s official national awareness week. Solely online, it gives everyone the opportunity to get involved to help the planet.
Ecotricity is part of the Green Britain Group, whose mission is to ultimately bring about a greener Britain. We do this in three ways:
By being at the forefront of the global green industrial revolution
By being pioneers in the new green economy
By offering consumers and businesses another way of doing things
That’s why Ecotricity was a pioneer (we’re 30 years old in 2025) in offering renewable energy. We were actually the world’s first green energy company! When our customers choose us, they are actively reducing the amount of fossil fuels burned to produce electricity in Britain, pushing us all towards the goal of net zero.
Most businesses are aiming for a net zero 2050 deadline. The UN, International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) (an organisation that independently checks that businesses net zero targets are based on accurate data with realistic reduction plans) all recommend that organisations should aim to halve their emissions by 2030.
As I outlined at the recent Festival of Sustainable Business, much of the focus in the energy industry is how they decarbonise their supply, which has a much greater carbon footprint than any operational impacts. However, Ecotricity only supplies renewable electricity, which has no carbon impact. This means we can focus on our operations and the impact of our buying decision (our supply chain).
Our net zero target
At Ecotricity, in line with our value to be at the forefront of a green economy, we have set a net zero target to reduce the carbon from our own operations (Scope 1&2) by 90% by 2030.
What are scope 1,2 and 3 carbon emissions?
We know that travelling for business and how we heat our buildings represent nearly 90% of our Scope 1 carbon footprint. Because we only use renewable electricity, our footprint for electricity use (Scope 2) is already zero.
Therefore, to reduce this footprint we are going to have to change how we travel for business. This will mean more use of public transport (trains, buses, trams etc), car sharing when several of us are attending the same meeting or event and using electric vehicles whenever possible. We already hold many meetings electronically to reduce travel, but we really value person to person time with our colleagues and so we won’t be holding all our meetings on the computer.
The other change is to stop using gas to heat some of our buildings. We have agreed the investment needed and are currently working on plans on how we can upgrade the energy efficiency of our offices as well as install electric heating.
Our supply chain
To reach net zero, a business must look at how it can reduce the impact of its products. As we only supply renewable electricity that job is done. The last part of the net zero jigsaw is for a business to work with its suppliers to reduce the impact of the products and services it buys.
We have a net zero target, to reduce the impact of our supply chain (Scope 3) by 50% by 2030. This target is more cautious as, like many companies, we only recently began to gather data on the impact of our supply chain and where the carbon is generated. Once we have a better understanding of the challenges and how fast our suppliers can green their operations, we hope to be able to set more ambitious targets.
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