Our Decarbonisation Journey
At EFM, we are committed towards our planet’s fight against climate change and are proud to share our latest contributions to the climate crisis.
Identifying
Our decarbonisation journey started by conducting an internal audit to identify and target our main sources of CO2e emissions.
We used a tool by SSE Energy Solutions to calculate and quantify our emissions by breaking them down by Scope, allowing us to gain insight into the amount of greenhouse gas we were producing yearly.
The result for the 2022 reporting period was 5.7 tCO2e, with our main emissions being Scope 3 emissions.
Benchmarking
The next step in our journey was to benchmark our results.
We used a recognized energy benchmarking tool by ‘The Carbon Trust’ to ensure that our working spaces were performing within industry standards.
Emissions Reduction Plan
We then developed reduction targets for the following years in order to track future progress against our 2022 baseline measurements.
We are committed to reaching Net Zero by 2030, as well as reducing yearly emissions by at least 5% year-on-year, with our current data showing that we should be on track by the 2030s.
Offsetting
The next step of our journey focused on offsetting our measured emissions.
We contributed towards a major UK reforestation project verified by the VCS (Verified Carbon Standard), which commits to planting native British trees in schools in the South East region, creating long-term carbon capture points.
Supporting 3/17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) created by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
Our contribution offset precisely the same amount of tCO2e that was obtained via our carbon footprint calculation.
>View our certificate here<
Third-party Accreditation
To certify all our efforts and commitments towards Net Zero, we recently joined the United Nations Climate Change Now (UNCCN) initiative, a platform that encourages and supports organizations to track and evidence their progress towards reaching their sustainability goals by 2050.
As part of our partnership with the United Nations programme, we completed an annual report, outlining precisely all our actions and commitments to combat climate change, which was submitted to the Climate Neutral Now board, who, after reviewing our responses and evidence, provided us with a score across three areas: Measuring, Reducing & Contributing.
We are pleased to say that we obtained a Silver in the ‘Contributing’ category.
Future Steps:
We are in the process of exploring more third-party verifications to further cement our position as one of the Net Zero leaders in the procurement industry, including ISO 14001 Environmental Management System (EMS) and becoming a B-Corp.
Our targets and ambitions are also continuously reviewed and amended to ensure that we are always setting the prime example for both our clients and suppliers.