Environment
We are committed to safeguarding the global environment for future generations, taking positive action to reduce our contribution to climate change and our other impacts on the environment.
Climate change |
Climate change is possibly one of the greatest challenges facing society in the 21st century. |
Our key performance indicator to monitor our performance in this area is the percentage reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions against our baseline. We also measure absolute emissions.
We report our greenhouse gas emissions in line with our corporate responsibility reporting principles, which includes our interpretation of the World Resources Institute Greenhouse Gas Protocol. The Protocol provides a breakdown of direct emissions (Scope 1), indirect emissions resulting from purchased electricity (Scope 2) and other indirect emissions (Scope 3). We believe our breakdown provides greater transparency and focuses attention on those emissions over which we have the greatest control.
During 2007/08, we reviewed our climate change strategy (first approved in 2006), and concluded that we should increase our target of reducing our Scope 1 and 2 emissions of greenhouse gases to 80% against our baseline ahead of 2050, compared with our prior 60% reduction target. This target is ambitious and will challenge us to develop, now and over the next 42 years, new ways of conducting our business to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
We will deliver our revised 80% reduction target through our climate change initiative, with a corporate team that will work with each of our lines of business to deliver the target. The initiative is structured around three elements which we believe will transform our business:
- fully integrating sustainability and climate change considerations into our business decisions, including the setting of carbon budgets within each of our lines of business;
- influencing legislators and regulators to reshape energy markets to meet the climate change challenge; and
- helping and supporting our customers, employees and suppliers in changing their behaviours so as to be more considerate of the environment.
For this reporting period, we have not included the emissions associated with the operations acquired with KeySpan because we need to conduct an emission inventory and verification process before we can include those emissions in our baseline and in our reported absolute emissions. During 2008/09, we will carry out a review of our greenhouse gas inventory to ensure that we are capturing data from all material emission sources, in particular identifying and quantifying those associated with the operations we acquired with KeySpan.
Against our baseline, to date we have achieved an approximate 38% reduction. The derivation of our baseline is included in the responsibility section of our website.
During 2007/08, our Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions amounted to some 4.1 million tonnes CO2 equivalent, compared with 4.3 million tonnes in 2006/07 and 4.8 million tonnes in 2005/06.
Greenhouse gas emissions (Scope 1 and 2)
% reduction against baseline
* Excludes operations acquired with KeySpan. These will be included from 2008/09 onwards. Totals are approximate and prepared where possible on a combination of fiscal and calendar year data
Greenhouse gas emissions
Million tonnes CO2 equivalent
† Tonnes per £m revenue excludes emissions and revenue from KeySpan
* Excludes operations acquired with KeySpan. These will be included from 2008/09 onwards. Totals are approximate and prepared where possible on a combination of fiscal and calendar year data
Total Scope 1 and 2 emissions per £million of revenue amounted to some 457 tonnes CO2 equivalent in 2007/08 compared with 471 tonnes in 2006/07 and 521 tonnes in 2005/06.
Methane leakage from our gas networks accounts for some 61% of this year’s reported Scope 1 and 2 emissions. During the year, we replaced approximately 1,850 kilometres of old iron pipes in the UK, the largest source of these emissions.
Losses from our electricity transmission and distribution networks account for a further approximate 5.6 million tonnes CO2 equivalent, compared with 5.1 million tonnes in 2006/07 and 5.0 million tonnes in 2005/06. These losses, and consequently the resulting emissions, are largely driven by factors outside our direct control (for example, the fuel used by individual generators and the physical distance between generation and centres of demand). For this reason, we class these as Scope 3 emissions. A more detailed rationale behind this decision, together with a breakdown of the constituent emission sources for the three categories, is included in our reporting principles on our website here.
Although greenhouse gas emissions from the operations acquired with KeySpan are not included in the above performance metrics, the most significant emissions are made from our electricity generation plants in New York City and Long Island, including the Ravenswood generation station. Since we acquired them up until 31 March 2008, these plants emitted approximately 5.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Historically contaminated land |
We manage an inherited portfolio of historically contaminated land including former manufactured gas plants, industrial landfills, former gas holders and older substations on our transmission and distribution networks. Sites can sometimes have a complex mix of contamination dating back over 100 years. |
The main focus of our remediation programme is on managing the environmental risk by targeting those with the highest environmental risk profile and those where we have a legal or regulatory requirement to remediate, while returning land to productive public or private use where we can, and where it is surplus to operational requirements.
National Grid manages land contamination issues on 529 sites (not including KeySpan sites), the majority of which were previously used for gas production. In the US, this includes obligations in relation to land owned by third parties.
During 2007/08, environmental work stages were completed on some 189 sites of which 33 included remediation.
Protecting the environment |
Our objective is to help protect the environment for future generations and so we are committed to continuous improvement in our environmental performance by: |
Key performance indicators that we monitor in this area comprise the number of significant direct environmental incidents and the total value of fines from prosecutions and citations.
We aim to implement environmental management systems certified to the international standard ISO 14001 in all our businesses to help us deliver improvements in these areas.
At 31 March 2008, approximately 66% of our employees worked to certified ISO 14001 environmental management systems compared to over 90% at the same time last year. The main reasons for this reduction were the acquisition of KeySpan operations that were not ISO 14001 certified and the disposal of our wireless infrastructure operations that were certified. During 2008/09, we will work to bring KeySpan operations in line with the rest of the Company.
The number of significant environmental incidents in 2007/08 arising directly from our operations was 34, which included 25 contractor-related incidents, compared with 40, including 20 contractor-related incidents in 2006/07 and 23, including 1 contractor-related incident in 2005/06. Incidents outside of our control resulting from third party or weather-related damage to our networks was 1 compared with 13 in 2006/07 and 25 in 2005/06.
There were no prosecutions by enforcing bodies resulting from these incidents. In the US, we received 6 environmental citations in 2007/08 compared with 9 in 2006/07 and 10 in 2005/06. Of these, 1 attracted a fine of $6,000 (£3,000). Prosecutions and citations for operations acquired with KeySpan will be reported from 2008/09.
In our 2008 employee engagement survey, 55% (2006: 73%) of respondents considered National Grid acts responsibly in all its business dealings, including environmental management.
Significant environmental incidents
Direct
* Excludes operations acquired with KeySpan. These will be included from 2008/09 onwards
Significant environmental incidents
Third party/weather
* Excludes operations acquired with KeySpan. These will be included from 2008/09 onwards
We also take the issues that surround electric and magnetic fields seriously and in all our operations, as a minimum, we aim to comply with the regulations, guidelines or practices relating to them in force in the different jurisdictions in which we operate.
We recognise there is some scientific evidence suggesting certain adverse health effects may be linked to electric and magnetic fields. There is also evidence linking an increased risk of certain diseases to proximity to power lines, though the cause of this is unclear. As a consequence, there is public concern and we take these issues very seriously. The balance of evidence remains against both power-frequency and radio-frequency electric and magnetic fields causing ill health. The World Health Organization has classified power-frequency magnetic fields as ‘possibly’ carcinogenic. Our public position statement on electric and magnetic fields, which we review annually, helps set the framework within which we continually assess the scientific evidence in this area, determine any implications for the way in which we conduct our business and explain to society what the science is telling us. We actively support high-quality research and open communication and we look for more constructive and less confrontational ways of handling issues such as electric and magnetic fields. In the UK we continue to support the Stakeholder Advisory Group on electric and magnetic fields, which we initiated, and which published its first assessment of the issues in April 2007 (available at www.emfs.info/sage).
On our website (www.nationalgrid.com), we provide further information on the steps we are taking to reduce our impact on the environment, including our use of natural resources and minimising the impact on the environment of waste.