Our Environmental Footprint
It’s not easy being green – it takes a lot of work!
We’ve been calculating our Environmental Footprint every year since 2010. It’s not about how green our electricity is - that’s taken care of in our Fuel Mix statistics. It’s about the greenness of everything else we do – what goes on behind the scenes, from selecting a site for a new solar farm and servicing our windmills through to the running of our offices.
We look at the impact that everything we do has on the environment – and we make it as green as can be. We’re now certified to ISO14001 as a mark of how we are continually striving to improve our performance and reduce our impact on the world around us as promised in our Environmental Policy.
It’s a bit like food miles – it’s not just the impact of the product itself, it’s the process it goes through as it’s delivered.
Our 2021 Environmental Footprint Report
Our aim is to become a zero carbon organisation by 2025, and our twelfth Environmental Footprint report gives us a clear picture of the progress we’ve made and what else we need to do to achieve our goal.
FY2020/21 has seen things begin to find a new normal after the past couple of years that have been severely hit by the effect of the pandemic. The data below compares last years results with our pre-COVID performance. Since then we’ve made some significant changes to the way we operate our offices in Stroud as well as our gas tariff becoming carbon neutral, leading to big drops in emissions relating to gas and water. Our Operation & Maintenance team have also optimised their route planning which has helped to cut their impact by 21 over the past four years,. Overall across the Ecotricity Group, including the Development of generation sites, maintenance of existing sites and all of the office based activity to supply and support our customers we’ve seen a drop of 35% in our carbon foot print last year compared to 2018/19 which is pretty epic.
Our 2021 Carbon Footprint (Tonnes of CO2)
| FY19 | FY20 | FY21 | FY22 | % Change | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Electric | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | - |
| Gas | 18.2 | 1.4 | 0 | 0 | -100 |
| Water | 3.9 | 3.3 | 1.2 | 0.5 | -87 |
| Pool car / Van fuel | 156.3 | 105.6 | 130 | 123 | -21 |
| Grey fleet (staff own vehicles) | 1.8 | 9.7 | 3 | 2 | +23 |
| Air Transport | 12 | 2.4 | 2.4 | 0 | -100 |
| Total emissions | 192.2 | 122.4 | 136.8 | 125.4 | -35 |
Our 2023 environmental targets
Various parts of the Ecotricity Group have taken on individual targets to tackle their significant environmental impacts over the coming year. The Facilities team are looking to cut our energy use in our remaining offices by 5% as are the O&M team based in Louth whilst the Technology and Growth Teams are aiming to increase the number of customers using our online services to reduce paper consumption (yes, some of our customers still like to have a paper bill!).
If you have any questions regarding the report or our Environmental Management System in general then please contact our Sustainability Lead – Gary Thomas (gary.thomas@ecotricity.co.uk)