ADVICE & OPINION
COMMENT
THE DRIVING SEAT
The UK Government recently announced
its ten-point plan for a ‘Green Industrial
Revolution’, a major milestone in the nation’s
race to net zero. With expertise in every area
of building management and site operations,
ranging from managing waste to improving
energy e iciency, FM providers are uniquely
equipped to help organisations reach net zero.
And, with companies’ emissions from buildings,
utilities and fleet directly under their control,
facilities managers have an opportunity to act
straight away. Now is the time for facilities
managers to step up and take a leading role in
driving sustainability.
This was the driving force behind the launch
of Plan Zero, Mitie’s commitment to reach net
zero carbon emissions by 2025, earlier this
year. However, as we can’t fight climate change
alone, a central part of Plan Zero is to help other
organisations reach their own sustainability targets.
This led us to publish our Plan Zero Playbook , a
step-by-step guide based on our own experiences
and expertise to help organisations create e ective
decarbonisation plans. However, we know that to
truly have an impact, we need to reach every sector,
not just FM.
With that in mind, Mitie recently took a leading
role in the Sustainable Innovation Forum 2020 , a
five-day virtual event featuring speakers from the
United Nations and Nestle, to the Prince of Wales.
As the only FM business presenting, this was our
opportunity to demonstrate the leading role that
14 DECEMBER/JANUARY 2021
our sector can play in helping organisations meet
global emissions targets. The event also gave us an
opportunity to talk about how we’ve embedded
Plan Zero into our business and how it’s already
delivering for us and our clients.
ELIMINATING CARBON EMISSIONS FROM POWER
AND TRANSPORT
Like many businesses – and the UK economy as a
whole – power and transport are the two biggest
sources of emissions for Mitie’s business, which is
why Plan Zero includes a commitment to use only
renewable energy and switch to a fleet of electric
vehicles (EVs).
It’s been less than a year since we launched Plan
Zero and we’ve already achieved our target of
switching to 100 per cent renewable energy across
the business. And, with over 800 electric vehicles on
the road and more than 600 charge points installed
across the UK, we’re on-track to achieve our goal
of transitioning our entire fleet of 5,500 vehicles to
electric by 2025. For us this is simply thinking about
our energy strategy holistically, we now consider
our fleet as an integrated energy system.
Fleet fuel and energy consumption are o en
the two biggest drivers of a company’s carbon
emissions. However, many businesses incorrectly
think that eliminating carbon emissions from power
and transport is an expensive luxury. By rolling out
Plan Zero, we’ve proven that this isn’t the case. With
a sharp reduction in renewable energy costs over
recent years, our Mitie Energy team has switched
dozens of our customers to green energy, reducing
both carbon emissions and costs. We’ve also
launched our Plan Zero Fleet Transition service to
help clients with every aspect of switching to EVs.
In most cases, both these services have no net cost
and o en generate significant savings.
ENHANCING INEFFICIENT BUILDINGS
According to the UK Green Building Council,
retrofitting existing o ices to make them more
energy e icient will be essential to helping the
UK meet its emissions targets. With this goal in
mind, we’ve spent the past few months performing
comprehensive reviews of around 15 key Mitie sites.
This has given us important baseline data and the
opportunity for us to identify solutions – including
calculating potential costs and pay back times – that
will make each building more energy e icient. The
solutions we’ve considered range from short-term
initiatives, such as changing heating settings and
installing LED lights, through to long-term solutions,
like working with landlords to replace boilers with
low carbon alternatives, such as ground and air
source heat pumps.
We’ve received many questions, both from
current customers and at the recent Sustainable
Innovation Forum, about how buildings can be
made more e icient given the financial pressures
many organisations are facing. However, we know
that doing right by the environment doesn’t need
to cost the earth. As a business, we’re lucky to have
our own team of energy specialists to help us put
these plans in place, using our own ‘Zero Carbon
for Zero Cost’ process. This approach, outlined in
our Playbook, focuses on implementing solutions
in a certain order, so that savings can be reinvested
into larger projects. With this method, we’ve already
helped our clients save over 300,000 tonnes of
carbon, eleven times our own annual emissions and
the equivalent to £20million, in FY19/20 alone.
ERADICATE NON-SUSTAINABLE WASTE
If we truly want to win the fight against climate
change, we need to go even further and reduce
all the resources that we are using. Our approach,
rather than a focus on recycling, is to eliminate
the waste that comes into each business in the
first place. With our experts at Mitie Waste, we’re
embedding this mindset into our own operations as
well as among our clients.
A fantastic example is our recently launched Plan
Zero City Landscaping service, where ‘zero single
use’ and ‘zero-to-landfill’ are at its core. Everything
about the Service is focused on leaving no negative
impact, including replacing all black bin bags with
reusable polypropylene racksacks and converting
any waste into heat and energy, to be used as
power.
It is our job as FM professionals to fulfill this role
in a way that provides comfort, reassurance and
empathy to tenants and landlords, in this strange
new world.
The FM sector will drive a green recovery says Simon King, Mitie’s
Director of Sustainability and Social Value