Power politics: energy costs are soaring. FM invited experts to a round table to discuss their plans.

AuthorPrickett, Ruth

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What are your organisations' main motivations to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions and how are they trying to achieve this?

Andrew Wood, managing director, Adnams: Our drivers have changed over time. We've tried to move CSR from defensive box-ticking into a more offensive marketing exercise (and do the right things for the environment).

Ten years ago we defined a set of organisational values. One of these focused on concern for the built and natural environment. So we chose a brownfield site when we built a new out-of-town distribution centre and dug it into the ground so that the building's temperature stays constant naturally. We used laminated beams from sustainable forests in Scandinavia and green sedum for the roof. We capture rainwater and recycle it through reed beds and we also use solar power. This building generated a lot of positive PR.

We then redeveloped our Victorian brewery, again building in sustainable features. Brewing involves lots of heat and the brewery now recovers 90 per cent of this. We also managed our raw materials more efficiently--for example, we use three pints of water to produce one pint of beer, rather than the industry average of eight.

Brewing produces water rich in yeast and sugars. Apparently, this is ideal for anaerobic digestion. The universities we're working with suggest that we may obtain up to 20 per cent of our energy from this in future.

We've also produced the first carbon neutral beer. We worked with local farmers, who grow the barley, and the Hop Association to find aphid-resistant hops. We reduced the weight of our bottles by 34 per cent and ensured that our lorries always move full loads. We only had to offset four-tenths of a penny. All the calculations are on our web site, so it's transparent.

John Shaw FCMA, finance and information services director, Oxfam: There's a strong link between climate change and poverty. Poorer countries are less able to cope with the implications. We are part of the Stop Climate Chaos campaign in the UK and we work with other organisations to raise awareness of climate change, so we can't be hypocritical.

Our 700 UK shops are our biggest source of CO2 emissions. We signed up last year to a green energy supplier because we wanted to be consistent and it's helped raise awareness. It's better to reduce energy consumption and, with a network of shops staffed by 20,000 volunteers, it's important to keep that message strong. We also moved our head office three years ago and made it much more energy efficient.

Another key factor in our CO2 output is flights. Our staff must travel if there's a humanitarian emergency, but technology, particularly videoconferencing, is useful. We recently interviewed candidates for a senior post entirely through videoconferencing. We can still do a lot more.

Allison Murray, corporate responsibility manager, T-Mobile: We have two main drivers. One is our group-level commitment to action on climate change set by our parent company, Deutsche Telekom. The other is business and energy efficiency.

About 86 per cent of the electricity we buy runs our base stations, cell sites and switch sites nationwide. In 2006 we installed smart meters...

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