We’ve published our Annual Environmental Report 2023/24 and here, our Head of Sustainability Carolina Karlstrom reflects on the successes and challenges we’ve faced over the last year as we progress towards net zero.
Our vision is to play our part in a fair and affordable energy transition, and we have a robust environment strategy to help us deliver that vision. Aligned with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), our Environment Strategy sees us contributing to the decarbonisation of the energy network, reducing the carbon footprint of our business and ensuring our networks are resilient to an ever-changing climate.
Our ambition remains the same: we’re committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2045, mirroring the Scottish Government’s target.
I’m immensely proud of the work our passionate and dedicated teams are doing to protect the environment and reduce the impacts of climate change. In our third Annual Environmental Report (AER), published on Tuesday 1 October, we share our environmental achievements and challenges from 2023/24 – here are just a few highlights:
Improving and protecting biodiversity
In 2023/24, we launched nine biodiversity improvement projects across our southern network, bringing the total number of improvement projects across both our networks to 19.
We’ve planted trees, sown wildflowers and created homes for a variety of species. You can see the improvements made in 2023/24 below and can read about the improvements we’ve made at our Bishopstone Lane site in Surrey in the full report.
I’m thrilled our biodiversity improvement project in Oban, Scotland has been externally recognised at the ‘BIG Biodiversity Challenge’ awards last week – you can read more about that in Greg Forde’s blog here, and a big congratulations to Graeme Walker and the Real Estate team!
Over the coming year, we will carry out improvements on more sites across both our Scotland and Southern network areas.
Reducing emissions from our network
Our biggest environmental impact is our carbon emissions and the biggest contributor to this is leakage of gas from our network – so called fugitive emissions.
We continue to make steady progress in reducing leakage, largely through our mains replacement programme which sees us replace old metals mains with new polyethylene (PE) pipe. In 2023/24, we replaced 795km of metal mains with PE which helped contribute towards a reduction of approximately 25,000 tonnes of carbon.
We’re also reducing leakage through innovation and developed several transformational innovation projects that support our ambition to decarbonise our network and improve our impact on the environment.
Reducing emissions from our streetworks
Julie Grieg, Roadworks Quality & Coordination Manager in Scotland, led our efforts within the Highway Authorities and Utilities Committee (HAUC(UK)) Working Group to update the Scottish Government guidance on reinstating streets to allow single surface asphalt to be used across all reinstatement projects.
Using a single surface material not only reduces asphalt waste but also reduces the need to return to site with a different material, resulting in fewer transport emissions. Using a single surface material could reduce SGN’s yearly emissions from contractor transportation by 7%. That’s an immediate reduction for vehicular emissions of 107 tonnes of CO2 – which equates to 68,000 miles less traffic.
We’ve already used single surface asphalt at over 400 of our connection sites with plans to use this at as many sites as practical over the next year.
Providing renewable energy to our facilities
Installing solar panels at our depots and offices reduces the amount of power we buy from the grid and our carbon emissions.
In 2023/24, we installed solar panels at a further three of our depots (Horsham, Segensworth and Walton Park in Portsmouth) and we plan to install even more at several of our depots this year. The carbon saving we expect from our Walton Park solar panels every day is the same amount of emissions that would be released if you drove a passenger car for 3,867km – that’s about the same as driving from Glasgow, Scotland to Quebec, Canada!
We know that each one of us plays a pivotal role in achieving a net zero future and we actively encourage every one of our people to explore how our environmental strategy relates to their role through internal Environmental Sustainability training modules.
I hope this has given you an insight into our environmental efforts – for more information about each of these projects as well as case studies on how we’re using innovation to meet our environmental obligations, read the full report here.
