The Carbon Trust continues to extend its operations: last year our total headcount increased by 13% from 118 to 133. We have achieved good reductions in carbon emissions in recent years and continue to seek further improvements. In pursuit of this objective, our main focus this year was on implementing an environmental management system that will allow us to manage and monitor our emissions impacts more effectively.
We have a new environmental policy, approved by the Board in March 2007 and overseen by a Board Director. We have appointed an environmental manager with direct responsibility for day-to-day environmental issues. Our environment team meets regularly to refine our environmental strategy, review progress and ensure action.
We have put in place systematic plans to cut our most significant environmental impacts and have initiated an internal audit process to assess our energy usage, travel, waste and
procurement impacts as well as internal awareness of our environmental policy.
ISO 14001 AccreditationIn pursuit of ISO 14001, which we have now achieved, we have been developing an environmental management system in keeping with our present and projected scale of operations. All members of staff have been briefed in the application of the new system. We are on a path of continual, year-on-year
improvement and are currently finalising our targets for the next three years.
Carbon emissionsTwo of our most significant environmental impacts are our use of energy in buildings and business travel. Despite our increased size, both of these have fallen during the past
year. Our estimated CO2 emissions for 2005/06 (including business travel) were 286 tonnes; estimated CO2 emissions for 2006/07 totalled 250 tonnes, though part of this reduction
was attributable to a change in the way that we measure our energy usage.
In previous years, we relied on pro-rata calculations for electricity usage based on the proportion of our London building attributable to Carbon Trust’s occupancy. This year we have been able to measure our actual elctricity usage. Gas usage continues to be calculated on a pro-rata basis.
As with last year’s report, we have adopted emissions factors published by Defra in July 20051. On this basis, emissions per
employee fell by 26% to 2.0 tonnes.
Given the monitoring process we have put in place and the systematic action we are now taking, we hope to be able to report continued progress in reducing our specific carbon emissions in the years ahead.
| Estimated total CO2 emissions in tonnes including business travel |
tCO2 |
| 2006/07 |
250 |
| 2005/06 |
286 |
Estimated CO2 emissions in tonnes per head includingbusiness travel2
|
|
| 2006/07 |
2.0 |
| 2005/06 |
2.7 |
|