Providor, the Group’s Smart Metering specialist, has begun a process of sustainable improvements across a range of areas within their business.

After undertaking an employee survey in late 2020, the leadership team recognised a strong sentiment across their people that improving environmental behaviours in the office was important to them. The business was already invested in an ongoing project with the rest of the Group with the Carbon Savings Trust to become carbon neutral, working towards PAS2060 certification in the coming months, and it was agreed that widening the business’ commitment to sustainable improvements held significant value to stakeholders.

With guidance from the Group’s Governance and Compliance Director, and engagement from the Board of Directors, an important opportunity was identified which not only tied in to the Groups ongoing development of an ESG strategy, but which would also provide the Group with valuable information and experience across a range of sustainable development goals.

Providor identified two initial areas of focus within this first stage of development. The first was to work closely with Group management and plan for improvements to their fleet, replacing a number of commercial and company diesel vehicles with zero emissions electric vehicles. This forms part of a Group-wide EV adoption and is an essential part of developing environmentally sustainable services across our operations. You can read more about our transition to EV here.

The second opportunity lay in understanding the environmental performance of the business’ Newmarket head office as a test case, and taking steps to make improvements. Providor undertook a Carbon Audit, establishing their carbon footprint and identifying the sources of emissions within the office environment. This also offered benchmarks for comparison and highlighted areas of improvement and practical solutions to improve the office’s operational efficiency.

The business is now undergoing a period of phased delivery of improvements including:

• Replacing 13 company diesel vehicles with EVs
• Replacing a number of commercial diesel vehicles with EVs
• Fitting EV charge points at their Newmarket office
• Eliminating single use plastic within the office
• Replacing all office lighting with LED systems fitted with light sensors and dimmers
• Solar panel installation
• On-site battery storage
• Switching to a greener energy supplier
• Water usage reduction systems
• 100% waste recycling

The results of these improvements will form part of a proof of concept to ultimately reduce the business and Group’s carbon footprint, expanding out to other offices and businesses and further delivering on our commitment to sustainability across our operations.