Carbon Footprint

Part 1 

Climate change is everyone’s business.  It is also our business.  Our mission is “to promote the development of resilient, accessible, low-cost energy networks globally, accelerating the transition to energy decarbonisation”.   It’s in our DNA and we are passionate about it!  

We educate and facilitate the introduction of low carbon technologies.  We work collaboratively with Regulators, organisations and partners to manage the effects of climate change.  We make it our business to deliver innovative solutions to operators of power networks globally.  We help accelerate progress towards clean growth, adaptation and resilience of energy networks.

We are a global business employing just over 200 employees with the majority based at our headquarters in the North West of England in the Cheshire Science Corridor Enterprise Zone.  Almost 40 million tonnes of CO₂ are emitted annually in the North West with businesses producing over one-third of this each year.  We are ideally placed to make a difference within our local community and we do this by openly sharing our knowledge and practices and getting involved.   Climate commitments and “Green Credentials” are critical for Sustainability and it is important for us to lead by example - for our employees, our customers, our suppliers and our communities.  We are a Values led company and the importance of leaving no one behind in the green revolution is core to our Values and how we operate. 

We think global.  We act local.  Our head office is located close to one of the UK’s largest industrial green-house gas emitters in Ellesmere Port’s industrial region.   Our CEO, Robert Davis, helped establish and co-chair’s Cheshire’s Sustainability and Inclusion commission, fusing local government policy with the businesses and communities it serves.  These are some of the stories that demonstrate the difference we are making and are proud to share as part of our entry for the Social Responsibility Award.

But it is not just about winning awards.  It is about making EA Technology a great place to work and giving our employees the knowledge that whatever their role, they are contributing to the decarbonisation agenda.  Our Mission statement brings greater focus to the climate responsibilities we all share and our individual performance goals are aligned to our vision and mission.  This has resonated well with current employees, evidenced through the improved scores year on year in our IIP surveys and high numbers of positive scores in responses to Indicator 2 around ‘Living the Organisations Values and Behaviours’ and Indicator 9 about ‘Creating Sustainable Success’.  It has also helped attract prospective employees, evidenced through responses to our vacancies (e.g.> 600 applications for our Graduate Programme) all expressing the desire and passion for joining a Company at the forefront of energy decarbonisation.

 We have pledged decarbonisation of our buildings (stores and offices) and began decarbonising a legacy building in April 2020.  We continue to invest in this with the aim of making it net zero with features including EV charging points, PV panels on the roof, a ground source heating system, LED lighting and an energy storage facility.  We are openly sharing our decarbonisation journey, documenting it as a blueprint, paving the way for others to adopt as they look embark on their decarbonisation journey and retrofit their own legacy buildings.

 Our planet and Our future are Our responsibility.  Time doesn’t give refunds - we need to act now. We are greater than the sum of our parts and together we can be the difference that makes the change. 

Part 2 

Our social responsibility strategy is to inform and educate – our employees, our customers, our suppliers, our neighbours, our industry partners and organisations/departments with the responsibility to support and fund the decarbonisation agenda.  

We achieve this through involvement - at key meetings, via our website, via our social media campaigns.  We offer our employees “community days” to facilitate their involvement in local initiatives that are meaningful to them and provide invaluable support to others.

We encourage other businesses across the North West to look at ways they can help achieve net zero emissions.  

Our social media campaign ‘journey to net zero’ consists of educational blogs, videos, and informative pieces on how, as a company, we are helping the local community with reducing their carbon footprint. 

We became actively involved with a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) project that addresses climate change and the wider environmental challenges we will all face in the future.   As part of a carbon replacement initiative linked to this, we donated £10,000 to The Mersey Forest Partnership project, to plant saplings on the Tatton Estate in Cheshire. The plantings go towards the aim of net zero carbon emissions in the UK and are also engaging communities within their own areas – raising awareness of global issues at a local level. We publicised the project on both social media and our website, as well as mailing out to our customers - the response was fantastic.

We are at the heart of the drive to achieve Net Zero and firmly believe that if others take up these initiatives, the overall effect will be overwhelmingly beneficial to the environment – but more importantly for our local communities too.

Part 3

We are proud of the work we are doing with key stakeholders, including Cheshire and Warrington Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) to help realise the ambitions of ‘Net Zero North West’, a group comprised of businesses, regional leaders and universities that plans to establish the UK’s first low carbon industrial cluster by 2030 and the world’s first net zero industrial cluster by 2040.   

We are involved in three projects, responsible for building, installing and operating monitoring software which enables the electricity sector and end users, from industrial to domestic customers, to understand their energy usage, and plan and implement practical solutions to future networks.

These are our stories:

 Net Zero Cheshire Project

Originally inspired by our desire to decarbonise our own headquarters, we are working on the delivery of what will be a fully operational demonstration of an integrated net carbon-zero smart energy building. It is actively complemented by energy storage and an electric vehicle charging system, but crucially applied to an existing building, not a greenfield site.  We have built an interactive website as a portal for companies to learn how to apply these systems to their own premises. Its smart tools will show where to make the fastest carbon reductions, how to improve energy efficiency, the source of electricity supply and understanding and taking control of energy usage. Our downloadable ‘Installation and Operating Manual’ guidebook (see attachment) will aid replication elsewhere, for anyone interested in delivering a similar system.

Net Zero Blueprint

Our local Ellesmere Port industrial region faces very significant challenges in meeting the UK government’s legal commitments to reducing industrial CO2 emissions, providing opportunities for external investment to decarbonise industry and create more jobs from further renewable/low carbon schemes. This first-of-its-kind scheme is delivering a blueprint for unlocking capital investment to achieve a net zero carbon industrial cluster in the Ellesmere Port region and will define a range of future local energy system designs to inform a range of investment opportunities.

These are expected to include capital investment in infrastructure, energy generation, distribution, storage, control systems, and related products and services. It will provide a strategy to secure, low carbon, affordable energy, whilst simultaneously supporting energy intensive industries. The scheme will provide a roadmap of investment over ten years, supporting a holistic and cost-effective transition to net zero and improving the region’s competitive position. EA Technology’s role is to review and verify the technology solutions and model the impact on the local electricity network, thus allowing the project team to identify the investment required to unlock the region’s potential.

Delivering Network Visibility in Cheshire's Energy Innovation District (EID)

As we continue our transition to Net Zero, data, particularly from the low voltage network, will become increasingly important. Historically, there has been little requirement for detailed data relating to this part of the electrical network, but new demands on the network, from our cars to the way we heat/cool or power our homes and the ways (and locations) we generate electricity will change the traditional power flows, creating the need to monitor and manage it. This project will facilitate secure, low carbon and equitable energy in the region – promoting indigenous growth, encouraging inward investment, and stimulating innovation. We are responsible for the installation of monitoring equipment into 673 Low Voltage (LV) substations within the Energy Innovation District sub-region. The aim is to create one of, if not the most monitored LV electricity networks in the world, providing near real-time data streams from the LV network, improving network reliability, and providing the visibility to facilitate active consumer engagement.

Part 4 - Anything you’d like to show us?
https://netzerocheshire.eatechnology.com/building-decarbonisation/

https://eatechnology.com/resources/ebooks/going-carbon-neutral/

https://hhttps://eatechnology.com/resources/videos-podcasts/openlv-social-responsibility/ttps://youtu.be/YrMy05zqyco