Taking action
We’re taking action on climate change by:
• improving the energy efficiency of our operations
• buying renewable energy
• offsetting unavoidable emissions.
Here are Sky’s emissions for 2007/2008:
Total CO2e emissions: 53,701 tonnes.
Our target is to reduce CO2e emissions to 58,394 tonnes by 2010 which, as our 2007/2008 total CO2e emissions show we are on track to meeting. This will be a 10% reduction from our 2003 baseline.
Being carbon neutral
In May 2006 we became the world’s first CarbonNeutral® media company. This announcement was our first public step in our long-term commitment to tackle climate change.
For more information about Sky’s CarbonNeutral® status, check out the CarbonNeutral® Sky document.
Improving building efficiency
Emissions from our sites account for 30,520 tonnes of CO2 - that’s 57% of our total CO2e emissions.
In 2007/2008 we continued to make changes to our buildings to improve their energy performance by:
• continuing to improve lighting - adding presence detection control and more energy efficient lighting in our buildings
• upgrading our air conditioning equipment, including oil-free chillers or inverter drives in our buildings
• improving hardware management in our data centres, using more energy efficient servers and systems that store up to ten times as much data for the same power
• installing hot and cold aisles in our new Amsterdam data centre. This directs cold air only to where it’s needed, making the air conditioning as efficient as possible
• putting timers on some out-of-hours equipment, and installing permanent signs throughout buildings to encourage people to turn off PCs, TVs and lights as part of our Switch Off! Campaign
• working with landlords of some of our leased premises to design and implement energy reduction initiatives
Last year we secured 100% renewable electricity from the national grid for the supply of our main sites in England, Scotland and most Easynet UK sites.
Travel emissions
Our other main source of CO2 emissions is travel. In 2007/2008 we generated 23,181 tonnes of CO2 - 43% of total CO2 emissions.
Last year, our emissions from travel increased as our growing customer base means the engineer vans are used more.
In October 2007 we introduced the UK’s first commercial trial of Vauxhall Vivaro B30 bio-diesel vans. The vans run on sustainably sourced bio-diesel and should reduce each van’s CO2 emissions by up to 20%. We’ve also switched 140 of our field engineer team managers to hybrid vehicles, and we’re trialling electric vans that are run on renewable electricity.
In 2008 we also launched the trial of our first electric van. The specially-designed 3.5 tonne electric-powered vehicle has a range of 100 miles before it needs to be recharged and can travel at up to 50mph. The van can also power itself while on the road thanks to its regenerative brakes. Over a year, we estimate that the van will save about the equivalent of the energy needed to power over 94,000 fast boil kettles for two minutes. That is over 470,000 cups of tea.
We have a number of other initiatives aimed at reducing emissions from travel, including video and teleconferencing facilities, and locally based taxi services that use hybrid vehicles.
Indirect emissions
We understand that the carbon we’re responsible for extends beyond the emissions we generate and therefore the emissions we include in our footprint. For example, emissions come from our third party suppliers who do set top box installations and outside broadcast companies on behalf of Sky.
We’ve started to identify the key areas of these indirect emissions and will continue to work with our suppliers and partners to identify, report and reduce these.
This year we examined emissions from outside broadcast activities, outdoor advertising, third party suppliers who do set top box installations and third party suppliers who provide customer contact centre services. Together these accounted for approximately 22,755 tonnes of CO2 emissions in 2007/08.