Carbon reduction

Carbon critical design

Atkins began its carbon critical design awareness programme in 2008 with two aims: to encourage senior managers to engage their teams in the role engineers will have to play to deliver a low-carbon economy, and to promote the transfer of knowledge within the business. Building on that activity we are now focusing on improving levels of client engagement, and to this end have invested more than £1m in the development of a suite of carbon tools, which were launched towards the end of 2009. These tools are designed to help organisations make decisions on how to reduce embodied and operational carbon and thus to influence designs.

The tools, outlined below, fall into two categories: generic tools that can be used by any part of the organisation, and market-specific tools.

These tools are now being shared with industry to encourage greater collaboration with governments, clients and professional institutions and to help stimulate development and knowledge on the carbon agenda.

Through our chief executive’s position as chair of the Construction Industry Council in 2009/10 we engaged closely with the UK Government on how its Low Carbon Transition Plan can be delivered within the UK. Atkins has also been central to the establishment and delivery of the Construction Innovation and Growth Team (CIGT) which is focusing on the delivery of a low-carbon construction industry for the UK.

Atkins engaged the consultancy Forum for the Future, and specifically Jonathon Porritt, to provide an independent review of our objectives, approach and progress on carbon critical design. The review recognised that our internal learning on carbon is the most comprehensive that has been encountered, with extensive training undertaken and an impressive range and quality of tools developed around carbon critical design. The review also stated that the level of client engagement was hugely encouraging whilst recognising that the future focus of the programme will need to be weighted more towards outcomes than processes.

Atkins has continued to engage with an ever-greater number of clients on carbon critical design, resulting in more exemplar projects which can be viewed on our website (www.atkinsglobal.com).

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Our carbon performance

We achieved the Carbon Trust Standard for our UK operations and believe we are the first organisation in the design engineering consultancy sector to do so. The standard is awarded to organisations for measuring, managing and genuinely reducing their carbon emissions and committing to reducing them year on year. Over a three year review period we reduced our emissions from energy use and company vehicles by 11.5%. We now plan to extend the scope of the standard to cover our non-UK operations in 2011.

In 2009 we were rated in the top ten of FTSE 350 companies for the performance element of the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). The performance section recognises companies that effectively manage and share carbon data; make the most of climate change opportunities and create solutions to manage risks; engage with climate change policymakers and work towards reducing their own carbon footprint. Our overall reporting score for the CDP also placed us in the top 75 of the FTSE 350 companies.

In October 2009 we launched our Raising Awareness Cutting Energy (RACE) campaign to raise awareness and cut energy consumption in our property portfolio by 12.5% by March 2011. The campaign is focused at an individual property level to encourage all employees to play their part in reducing consumption by establishing a positive energy culture. More than 50 of our locations are participating and more than 5,700 employees have completed the e-learning training modules that we have created on energy management.

We have also pledged to HRH The Prince of Wales’ May Day Network that we will publish our carbon footprint and we have committed to reducing our carbon emissions by 10% in 2010 as part of the 10:10 campaign. As of April 2010 we are participating in the Carbon Reduction Energy Efficiency Scheme in the UK. To facilitate these reductions remote energy metering was installed at nine new locations during the year, meaning that 14 of our key UK properties now have the system installed. There were immediate results as significant reductions in both gas and electricity consumption were identified and implemented at those locations. The system has been complemented by the installation of our own Atkins Remote Technology (ArT) system at 11 properties.

Our carbon emissions

We are now able to report on our energy consumption for all of our operations in China, Europe, the Middle East, the UK and the USA. We consume gas, electricity and diesel in our own operations. Figures 2 and 3 show the average emissions per employee and the total emissions for each region.

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Worldwide, we emitted 19,774 tonnes of CO₂ from energy consumption. Carbon emissions from energy use in our Middle East business have increased due to the inclusion of our Global Design Centre in Bangalore and more accurate data on diesel consumption in the Middle East. In China our carbon emissions have reduced by 168 tonnes due to lower reported energy consumption in our offices. Emissions in Europe have also reduced despite the inclusion of Poland for the first time.

This is also the first time that we have been able to report on carbon emissions from energy consumption for our operations in the USA.

Figure 3: Total emissions

Source	CO2 emissions from energy consumption (tonnes)			CO2 emissions from business travel (tonnes)			Total 2009/10 emissions (tonnes)
Region	Gas	Electricity	Diesel	Road	Air	Rail
China	0	600	0	33	861	0	1,494
Europe	25	642	0	247	144	30	1,088
Middle East	0	3,392	278	341	424	0	4,435
UK	2,292	11,968	4	12,824	3,694	1,321	32,103
USA	0	573	0	n/a	533	n/a	1,106

The calculation for CO₂ emissions from our energy consumption is made using the latest published DEFRA figures for electricity in the UK and for gas in the UK and Ireland. We use the five-year average from the latest published Greenhouse Gas Protocol figures for each country other than the UK for electricity. Where data does not exist we extrapolate known consumption data in the region to include the remaining locations.

We are now also able to report on business travel emissions for all of our operations. Our business travel data covers: all road, air and rail travel for the UK; company car, air and rail travel for Europe and India; company car and air travel for China, and air travel for the USA. Our business travel emissions from road and air for the Middle East business account for approximately 60% of our operations in that region. Our worldwide CO₂ equivalent emissions associated with business travel were 20,452 tonnes.

In the UK our carbon emissions from business travel decreased by 15.9% from 21,201 equivalent tonnes CO₂ in 2008/09 to 17,839 tonnes of CO₂ in 2009/10. This is against a backdrop of a 7.9% decrease in average headcount over the same period.

In the USA we flew 43% fewer business miles than the previous year, reducing our CO₂ equivalent emissions by 398 tonnes. In China emissions from business travel by air decreased by 5.3% whilst more accurate data led to a slight increase in emissions from road travel. In Europe emissions from air travel increased slightly with the inclusion of Poland in our reporting whilst emissions from road travel increased significantly with extra data now available from Denmark and Poland.

The calculation for CO₂ equivalent emissions from our business travel is made using the latest published DEFRA figures for road and air travel, the DEFRA figures for rail travel in the UK and the US Intercity rail emissions figure for non-UK rail travel in the absence of valid country-specific information. The calculations include the conversion of other greenhouse gases into carbon emissions. The numbers reported for 2008/09 have been revised due to changing DEFRA emissions factors to enable better year-on-year comparison. In the UK a financial incentive to encourage employees to choose lower-emitting company car vehicles was introduced in 2009. The average carbon emissions of our UK company car fleet of 1,500 vehicles has reduced to 148g/km (2009: 154g/km). See Figure 4.

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