We have been running a carbon reduction programme since 2007, and by March 2019 we had reduced this by 52 per cent from 772 tonnes CO2e per year to 367 tonnes.
The first thing we did was to appoint a Carbon Reduction Adviser and set carbon budgets for each team within the organisation, to make sure everybody shared the responsibility for reducing our carbon.
We've now completed a number of carbon-reduction projects around our buildings and transport, including:
- Installing biomass boilers at our Head Office and Northern Office.
- Installing solar photo-voltaic panels at our Head Office, Northern Office and Coniston Boating Centre.
- Replacing lighting with low-energy LEDs in several locations.
- Installing voltage optimisation at our Head Office.
- Taking advantage of virtualisation to reduce the number of physical computer servers.
- Replacing several printers, photocopiers and faxes with single multi-functional devices.
- Introducing a ‘travel hierarchy’ to reduce the miles we drive for meetings and site visits, and using telematics to record how efficently and safely our staff drive.
We have recently set a net-zero target for the organisation. The priority is to lower our emissions to the bare minimum before we consider offsetting them. Some of our recent projects to help us meet net-zero are:
- Replacing 13 of our diesel pool cars with electric vehicles. This has just won us the 2021 GreenFleet Public Sector Car Fleet of the Year award.
- Installing a water-source heat pump at Brockhole to heat the main building, drawing energy from Lake Windermere.
- Installing a solar car park at Brockhole which combines solar power, battery storage and electric vehicle charge-points.
- Using new tools for video-conferencing to reduce our business mileage even more.
We have further building efficiency and solar panel projects in the pipeline, and are committed to finding more ways to help us reach our net-zero target.
