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Chris Burchell, managing director of rail operator Southern, which is part of the Go-Ahead group.
On a fast track to carbon savings
When leading public transport provider, Go-Ahead, wanted to boost its carbon reduction activity, the Carbon Trust was on hand to assist. The resulting organisational framework enabled the Group to achieve a 27% reduction in site energy consumption in the first two years and become the first national transport provider to be certified with the Carbon Trust Standard in 2008.
The business case
Go-Ahead is one of the UK's leading providers of quality public transport. The company has a substantial presence in London's rail and bus markets, as well as operations in North East England, the West Midlands, and the South of England; almost a billion passengers travel on its buses and trains each year.
There is a real commercial imperative for Go-Ahead to reduce its carbon emissions. As the Managing Director from the Group’s Southern rail franchise, Chris Burchell, explains: “The amount of money we make each year is roughly equivalent to the amount of money we spend on energy, so anything we can save on our energy goes direct to the bottom line.”
In addition, as one of the UK’s leading providers of transport services, Go-Ahead places corporate social responsibility as central to its business.
“We have a responsibility as a public transport operator to run our services in a sustainable and environmentally responsible manner. This means making reductions in our own carbon emissions a priority, in addition to delivering high quality train and bus services that provide an attractive alternative to car travel. We were the first national transport provider to become members of the Energy Efficiency Accreditation Scheme in 2005,” adds Burchell.
However, Go-Ahead is a large organisation with many offices, stations, garages and depots across the UK, and its large fleets of vehicles need energy to run.
The approach
In order to see how the company could further boost its carbon reduction activity, in 2007 Go-Ahead’s Group Environment and Energy Manager Chris Grinsted approached the Carbon Trust about its Carbon Management service.
“The Carbon Trust helped us establish a really clear framework in which we could organise ourselves group-wide and across our range of companies. Now, senior management has a clear responsibility for carbon reduction targets and carbon is a boardroom topic of discussion. At a lower level, we have instigated company and group-wide forums looking at how to share best practice. This may not be as exciting but without it, our subsequent successes wouldn’t have happened. Working with the Carbon Trust gave us the structure and impetus to ramp up our activity and momentum to keep it on track,” reveals Grinstead.
The Carbon Trust also helped Chris better understand which projects were eligible for Enhanced Capital Allowances, making it easier for Go–Ahead to prioritise.
Chris then went on to look across the Group to identify opportunities where common savings could be made through a single, centrally-managed programme.
Turning waste energy into an asset
In 2008, Southern and Southeastern – both part of the Group – became the first train operators in the country to introduce regenerative braking on the ‘third rail’ system. This groundbreaking system harnesses the energy produced during braking, transferring it back into the rail system, allowing other trains to use it.
The result is a saving of about 15% of consumption on Southern’s largest fleet of trains – and a reduction in carbon emissions by more than 11,000 tonnes a year. In recognition of this pioneering engineering feat Southern was awarded the Environmental Innovation Award at the HSBC Rail Awards.
Clever lighting and metering
Through 2008/09 the company replaced lighting at 45 of the biggest sites – train maintenance and bus depots - with intelligent, energy efficient, high-bay lighting systems. Each of these light fittings has integral lux and movement sensors, so the lights only come on when required, reducing energy consumption by up to 70% compared to the old lighting systems.
The system is now being trialled as platform lighting at a number of stations and, if successful, could potentially be rolled out to many of the company’s 500 stations.
Burchell explains, “In the first year we managed to save around 17% of our site energy. In the second year, rolling out more energy efficiency measures we saved as an average another 10%, although in some cases it was far more than this. We expect to save another 25% over the next five years. We have also seen reductions in maintenance and re-lamping costs as the lighting is guaranteed for five years.”
Smart metering, which produces half-hourly data, has also been installed on many of Go-Ahead’s systems so managers can see exactly what they are contributing and how much they are saving.
Growing the grass roots
However, as Burchell details, “The solutions don’t all have to be as innovative or as even as expensive as that. We have instigated a range of ideas and initiatives from simple housekeeping improvements at stations and recycling, all the way through to major investments, like the black box telemetry in our bus fleets which show how fuel-efficiently the vehicles are being driven.”
Getting the ‘gold’ standard
Go-Ahead applied for the Carbon Trust Standard in order to gain respected, external validation of the success of its carbon reduction activities. In December 2008 it was certified as having achieved a relative reduction of carbon emissions (tonnes of CO2 per million passenger journeys) of 11%.
“We are very proud to have the Carbon Trust Standard. The decision to go for it was taken at the highest level. It is very easy to make claims about what you are doing now and in the future, but it is far harder to substantiate them. It differentiates us from our competitors, and there will be direct financial benefits, in the first year at least, with regards to the Carbon Reduction Commitment. We are continuing to implement measures to achieve even greater reductions in the future,” says Burchell.
Offering up advice
“My advice for other organisations is to go for it. It doesn't have to be difficult, it doesn't have to be complicated and it doesn’t have to be expensive. What we found is that there is a clear commercial case for reducing your energy consumption. Saving money is very important to any business and any savings that we can make obviously help to contribute to the bottom line,” concludes Burchell.
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