About us
Our Issues
Cutting the carbon
We need energy to power our network, provide heating, lighting and cooling to our offices, deliver our customer equipment and travel where required. Our 'carbon challenge' isn't trivial and needs sorting.
Last year we kicked off some work with the Carbon Trust on our 'Cut the Carbon' programme to define our carbon footprint accurately and to investigate ways to reduce it.
We began by measuring our carbon footprint in accordance with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, which enables us to break down our carbon emissions into three categories or 'scopes'. We've managed to calculate our emissions for scope 1, which covers energy directly produced across our sites (gas, diesel, petrol), and for scope 2 which covers the energy (electricity) we buy from others.
Having established our scope 1 and 2 emissions, we've set ourselves a target of reducing these by 15% of our 2007 baseline year by 2015.
Getting a complete picture
What about our scope 3 emissions which includes things like our air and rail travel, sub-contracted logistics and, importantly, all the equipment we put in our customers' homes?
Well, we're on the case. Our estimated total for scope 3 emissions is 346,210 tonnes of CO2. The reason this is an estimate is because we've not yet been able to quantify emissions from our rail travel or logistics. We know this is important if we want to get a complete picture of our overall carbon footprint and we aim to have the data in place for next year's report.
What we're doing to reduce our emissions
So, we've got a target to reduce scope 1 and 2 emissions and are getting a more complete picture on scope 3. We've already kick-started some activities to reduce emissions across our overall footprint.
Thinking outside the box on set top boxes
One of the best ways Virgin Media can help reduce its carbon footprint is to increase the energy efficiency of products such as set top boxes and modems:
- Already, we've signed up to the voluntary EU code of conduct for digital TV systems. This sets maximum power consumption levels and advanced features such as auto-standby and puts our set top boxes in the lowest power-consuming mode after a period of inactivity. We're planning to launch our first product to meet this standard in late 2008. Our Virgin Media 'Free TV' box is already the best in class in terms of its energy use and we want to use this as a benchmark for all other set top boxes.
- We've also signed up to the code for broadband equipment, through which we are setting similar limits for power consumption levels.
- We've introduced a set of 'eco-design' principles so that every stage in the life-cycle of our products is as efficient and sustainable as possible.
Running lean, mean, green machines
We've been working with the Energy Savings Trust to develop a green transport plan that involves:
- Introducing a formal approach to monitoring employee mileage to identify opportunities for mileage reduction
- Identifying segments of fleet that would be suitable for hybrid vehicles
- Providing guidance and training to employees on fuel efficient driving (which has other added benefits including reductions in accidents and reduced vehicle maintenance needs)
- Launching a national car share scheme
Creating new ways to work
We're also managing the carbon footprint associated with our buildings, network and IT infrastructure including:
- A large IT hardware consolidation project that includes the introduction of energy monitoring across all of our data centres to track usage and reductions. This delivered a saving of around 340kw last year (enough energy to make around 17,000 cups of tea!) with a further 80kw saving due in 2008. We'll also be replacing 300 servers with VM ware (a piece of software that allows one server to do the job of many) giving us a further energy saving of 180kw.
- Relocating from under-utilised offices to larger sites - thereby cutting down on energy consumption
- Launching a major 'switch-off' campaign across our entire estate designed to encourage employees to deliver a 2-4% reduction in energy consumption on average across all our sites in 2008
- Replacing around 8,000 desk-top PCs with lower energy consuming thin-client terminals
- Developing a formal policy for homeworking which will allow more of our employees to work from home thereby reducing travel (and accompanied by advice on how to work more sustainably at home)
