Vision and Strategy

BT's vision is simply to help tackle climate change through the innovative use of communications products. We aim to lower the carbon intensity of our networks and to help our customers reduce their footprint. Services such as telephone, web and video conferencing can give a Return on Investment of up to 25:1 for spend, versus savings seen through the reduction in associated travel and salary expenses measured over a period of 12 months. A conservative figure of 54,000 tonnes of CO2 is being saved each year by BT using conferencing and collaboration services alone. Broadband has enabled BT to really change the way it works and now 70% of BT employees work flexibly some or all of the time.

Our strategy is therefore about cutting carbon by:

Reducing our own footprint
Influencing our customers and suppliers to reduce their footprints
Engaging with our employees to help reduce their personal footprints

In supporting the city Kyoto targets BT set a target to reduce its 1996 footprint by 25% by 2010, we actually achieved a 60% reduction. We have now pledged to reduce our footprint by 80% from the 1996 figure by 2016. This is no mean feat and will require even further improvements on energy efficiency.

To achieve this 80% BT needs to reduce emissions in our data centres, use 100% renewable energy, reduce emissions from our fleet through more efficient driving, trialling hybrids and bio-fuels, plus reducing our travel emissions through smarter travel and through greater use of our technology, and on top of this, we need our employees to switch off their monitors and pc's at night!

BT further pledged to implement 3 procurement principles in all our new contracts with suppliers:

We will harness the capability, diversity and innovation of our supply base to add value to our business and encourage suppliers to offer solutions which have a reduced environmental impact.
That the energy consumption and environmental impact of a product or service (from manufacture, through usage, to disposal) is a mandatory criterion in all tender adjudication.
That the energy consumption and environmental impact of any replacement product or service (from manufacture, through usage, to disposal) is less than its predecessor

We are now working these principles through our supply chain.

This is a tremendous challenge but one we are determined to meet.

"Conferencing saves BT 54,000 tonnes of CO2 a year"