Innovating to Net Zero

Anyone who knows me knows that sustainability and our environment are things that I am passionate about.  

It’s a topic that has become really important to me personally because of my children. Recently, my daughter told me off for leaving the tap running too long, saying – “you’re killing our world!” 

On reflection: she was absolutely right. 

We are responsible for making the world a good place and have to be accountable to future generations, like my daughter.  

Because of this, the race to net-zero carbon has become more important than ever before. 

Must we change? 

This question is easy. We have to change. 

Collectively we have been dumping hundreds of thousands of tonnes of CO2 into our atmosphere every day. To put this into perspective, this is the equivalent of 400,000 Hiroshima Bombs going off, warming up our planet every single day. 

Our global temperature increase is accelerating exponentially. This has led to extreme weather conditions, flooding, droughts, wildfires, ice caps melting, famine, extinction and pandemic diseases like we’ve not seen before. And it will only get worse.

Can we change? 

We can drive change through collaboration. 

If we look back 20 years, vehicle emissions were high, full of harmful diesel and exhaust fumes. Today, our Euro 6 fleet emits 11 times less than these vehicles.

We’ve also invested in Stage V and Hybrid machinery, which emits dramatically less than our machines did in the year 2000. 

We are taking steps in the right direction. 

We now have Eco Driver training and are proud to have trained over 1000 operators, which results in a dramatic reduction of CO2 emissions across our company and the industry as a whole 

We’ve also made use of Technology. 

Solar panel technology: with 400 on the roof of our depot, generating enough renewable energy to power five homes every month. 

Machine Control Technology helps us get the job done 42% quicker, with 38% fewer machine hours, using 34% less fuel. A real example of this is the A14 project, which finished nine months ahead of schedule.

This speaks for itself.  

What do I need from you? 

All I ask for is your energy and enthusiasm to get behind our ambitious plans to become net zero by 2040. 

Our three-pronged approach focuses on our fleet, depots, and supply chain.

In the year 2025, we have some milestones to be excited by: 

Our supply chain will be mandated to replicate our plan to be net zero carbon by 2040 to continue working with us. 

Something I am so proud of is the recent Carbon Exercise that our team completed with our customer, Skanska Costain STRABAG Joint Venture on HS2. Using a blend of telematic data and enhanced driver training, we were able to: 

Reduce idling from 41% to 24% 

Reduce average CO2 consumption per day by 46% 

Reduce fuel consumption from 17,124L in November to just 7,9447L in January – equating to a cost-saving of over £10,000 

You can read the full report on our website or contact me for more details. 

To recap my thoughts on sustainability and our environment: 

We must change. For the good of our children and our children’s children. 

We can change. We already have dramatically over the past twenty years, and now we must continue to work in the right direction. 

All I need from you is to get behind this ambitious plan to be net zero by 2040. 

For more on the topic, please visit our new sustainability page

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