Carbon management
Nationwide's carbon footprint is not significant compared with some other industry sectors. Our carbon footprint arises mainly from energy use in our buildings, which includes our administration centres and branch network, as well as emissions from our business travel.
Since 2004, the scientific basis for climate change from human interaction has become better understood and the potential global impacts more certain. We are elevating the priority we give to issues arising from climate change and are in the process of developing a more comprehensive climate change strategy. As well as continuing to manage our direct impacts, we will also develop strategies to manage operational risks from climate change in areas such as our mortgage portfolio, commercial lending and insurance services.
In 2003/04, we worked with The Carbon Trust to improve measurement of our carbon footprint and to discuss how we might reduce it. The Carbon Trust aims to promote a low carbon economy as part of the UK's climate change programme. From this work we developed a five-year (2004-09) carbon management action plan to reduce carbon emissions from energy use.
CO2 emissions
Our purchase of electricity from renewable sources (excluding Northern Ireland operations) has had a positive impact on our carbon footprint. We will continue this strategy, subject to availability of renewable energy sources and maintaining member value. We will also aim to purchase electricity from renewable sources for our Northern Ireland operations.
We have reduced our CO2 emissions by over 85% since 2005. Our total CO2 emissions decreased by 45.5% from 14,851 tonnes to 8,092 tonnes compared with last year. This is primarily due to the purchase of our electricity from renewable energy sources and improvements in the efficiency of building and IT equipment.
Total CO2 emissions (tonnes)
See data table with more detail: CO2 from energy use and from business travel.
CO2 emissions per thousand customer accounts
See data table with more detail.
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