Nature
The construction and maintenance activities that we undertake to provide reliable and clean energy inherently have an impact on the natural environment. In response to our awareness of these impacts, we’ve implemented a nature program to preserve and restore natural landscapes where possible.
There are significant differences in habitats and biodiversity across the geographies where we operate. Considering this, we’ve aligned our approach to nature with regional priorities. In the UK, our focus is on restoring the natural environment. In the US, our focus is on preserving the natural environment.
Nature metrics and how they’re measured
Our UK target is to restore the natural environment by 10% on the land we manage. We measure this using a natural capital approach that measures the impact of improvements that we make on our sites. This allows us to capture changes in ecosystem services and demonstrate gains for the environment at a site level. Only the activities undertaken by our Electricity Transmission business feed directly into this target, but all our business units are taking action on nature. The case studies below show some of the activities in other parts of our business.
Our US metric captures preserved acres that we manage across our electric and gas businesses. These categories include rare, threatened and endangered species protection, wetland mitigation, and vegetation enhancement. A live tracker allows us to capture projects within these categories that are material to protecting our natural resources.
We’re working on developing a new metric that will be used by all business units.
Our nature work in the UK
In the UK, our regulatory plans include ambitious nature and biodiversity restoration targets that go beyond statutory compliance, reflecting our strong commitment to environmental stewardship. In Electricity Transmission, we are committed to a 10% improvement on the sites we operate and on lands where we have new construction. We have established environmental education centers at several of our substations and have received regulatory innovation funding to conduct a nature and biodiversity supply chain impact assessment for the transmission sector in collaboration with other UK transmission operators. We also have a number of projects in our Electricity Distribution business, including a six-year partnership agreement with Heart of England Forest.
Our nature work in the US
In the US, we continue to pursue projects that support our preservation goals. We utilise Integrated Vegetation Management to promote stable, low growing plant communities that resist invasives on our rights of ways, allowing us to reduce mowing. We also have a number of programs to support pollinator initiatives and species conservation.
The importance of beaver deceivers!
We worked with a local company to install a beaver deceiver and replace culverts, preventing disturbance to beaver habitat.
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