Our Net Zero commitment
We are committed to minimising our impact on the environment and supporting the UK government’s ambition to meet its Net Zero target by 2050. Our four companies are actively working towards becoming Net Zero by 2030.
We are also supporting innovative businesses whose work is directed at developing solutions to the global issues of climate change, energy consumption, pollution and waste systems.
We aim to further improve our environmental performance in the following ways:
We are reducing the quantity of travel by car undertaken by our people in the performance of their roles. We already have policies that encourage the use of public and green transport (e.g. a cycle to work scheme, an electric vehicle scheme and season ticket loans). Since the COVID pandemic, we have continued to encourage hybrid working and the use of video conferencing tools to avoid unnecessary travel.
We are actively seeking to reduce the emissions relating to the heating and lighting of our own offices as well as the emissions arising from the heating and lighting of all the office buildings / innovation centres that we manage for our clients.
We operate recycling policies which are effective and compliant with ISO14001. We do not consider that our generation of waste, as a non-industrial or ‘white-collar’ office based business, is significant. We therefore intend to maintain our ambition to recycle effectively and become increasingly paperless in our work.
We provide space, finance and advice to a wide range of SMEs which are developing innovative solutions to environmental issues. For example, green tech companies such as Cleaner Seas Group in Cornwall, EcoSync in Oxford and Albotherm in Bristol.
Our business activities that support investment in SMEs has led to investment of over £5m into businesses developing services and products which address environmental sustainability. The most significant of these investments include building energy management systems, non-pesticidal crop and non-chemical fertiliser crop yield enhancement, and reducing the problem of oil sludge disposal.
We help SMEs to understand the importance of improving their environmental performance and refer them to relevant sources of support, resources and expertise. This includes connecting businesses with local and national energy efficiency and decarbonisation initiatives.
To help businesses improve their performance, we have also specially developed a sustainability version of our popular GROWTHmapper® online tool – the UK’s leading business diagnostic tool used by SMEs on business support programmes. This sustainability tool provides valuable insights into the systems, processes and attitudes within a business to help management teams develop a strategy for improving their environmental performance.
We seek to work with suppliers and partners who are also committed to minimising their environmental impact, reducing their carbon footprint and working towards Net Zero.
We continue to advise public bodies on strategies that will assist decarbonisation and provide insights in relation to environmental performance from our work with SMEs.