Society is rightly asking some tough questions of business these days. Climate change has emerged as society’s biggest ever environmental challenge and it is fundamentally changing people’s expectations of companies. People want to know if companies like National Grid are part of the problem, or part of the solution. They are asking very directly: is National Grid acting responsibly?
Of course we must continue to produce first class returns for our shareholders so that they want to keep investing in us, long-term. And we must always provide customers with safe, efficient and reliable services so that they want to keep working with us. But we must also take on tough challenges, tackling societal issues such as climate change.
We are already working with governments and our regulators to ensure that we are part of the solution to the global issue of climate change. This year we have decided to increase our commitment to reduce our own emissions from 60% to 80% by 2050. We are approaching this in a number of areas, including:
continuing our 30 year UK programme to replace old iron gas distribution mains with polyethylene pipes to reduce methane leakage;
looking at installing electricity generation equipment at some of our pressure reduction installations to recover some of the energy lost through gas pressure reduction;
changing our gas transmission compressor sites to run more cleanly;
continuing to reduce the leakage of sulphur hexaflouride (SF6) from our electrical switchgear;
addressing the emissions of our newly acquired generation facilities on Long Island; and
remaining focused on reducing our own emissions well ahead of government targets, through initiatives such as setting internal carbon budgets.
We have made good progress in implementing our climate change strategy. By the end of 2007/8, we had reduced our Company-wide emissions by 38%* compared with our baseline for our continuing operations.
We must operate in a way that truly inspires people, inside and outside National Grid, to trust us as a company. That is what being responsible is all about. If we maintain this approach, we firmly believe National Grid will have a long-term, successful future and will be recognised as an essential part of the solution.
*Excludes KeySpan operations