Water retailer Business Stream has cut its carbon emissions by 25.3% in the past year as part of its plan to reduce its carbon footprint.
It will now target a further 20% reduction by April 2023 against a 2018/19 baseline.
Chief executive, Jo Dow, said: “As a water retailer we recognise that we have an important role to play in helping our customers achieve their sustainability goals. But we also have a responsibility to reduce our own environmental impact. Over the past year we’ve taken pro-active steps to significantly lower our carbon emissions – and we’re now committed to doing the same again this year. It’s another ambitious pledge but we’re determined to do everything we can to achieve our net zero target as quickly as possible.”
The reductions have been achieved through energy efficiency measures and introducing new processes to lower emissions. These included cutting the number of pages in bills, installing energy efficiency air conditioning and relocating servers to the cloud to lessen the energy required to cool them down, as well as installing electric vehicle charging points.
The retailer added it has saved the Scottish public sector more than £2 million through efficiency and leak detection in water costs in the past year, which helped to save 586,000 tonnes of carbon.
The pledges are aligned with Scotland’s public sector target to be net zero by 2045 with interim targets of 75% by 2030 and 90% by 2040. Business Stream together with its parent company Scottish Water has set a goal of recaching net zero by 2040.
The water sector in England and Wales has separately committed to achieving net zero by 2030, ahead of the government’s 2050 target.