Progressing our People and Planet Plan

08 April 2022

3 minutes

Sustainability

We've been taking steps everyday towards delivering our People & Planet Plan - and one year on, we’re well on our way to creating a more inclusive and sustainable future that supports communities, our planet and each other.

Our People & Planet Plan was introduced last year to accelerate action through five group-wide goals, focusing on areas that matter deeply to our business and society, and where we’re well placed to make a world of difference - from strengthening our commitment to net zero and creating the diverse and inclusive team we need to get there, to maximising our contribution to the communities we’re all part of which are set out below.

By 2030, we want to:

Create an engaged team that reflects the full diversity of the communities we serve
Recruit 3,500 apprentices and provide career development opportunities for under-represented groups (1,000 apprentices by the end of 2022)
Inspire colleagues to give 100,000 days to build inclusive communities (20,000 days by the end of 2022)

By 2045-50, we want to:

Help our customers be net zero by 2050 (28% carbon intensity reduction by the end of 2030)
Be a net zero business by 2045 (40% carbon reduction by the end of 2034)
All company and senior leaders to reflect 2011 Census data for working populations with 47% women, 14% ethnically diverse, 15% disability, 3% LGBTQ+ and 3% ex-service by 2030 (30% women, 13% ethnically diverse, 4% disability, 3% LGBTQ+ and 3% ex-service by the end of 2022).

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Find out more about our progress in 2021

To help reach our People goals, we’ve strengthened our recruitment processes to ensure equal access to opportunities, introduced our Shadow Board of diverse colleagues to meet with leaders and drive colleague-centric decisions, and encouraged a significant increase in the number of women entering engineering, having successfully recruited 600 apprentices with 30% being women against our 50% ambition. At the same time, we’re building more inclusive communities with colleagues volunteering nearly 10,900 days since 2019.

Meanwhile we’ve placed the largest commercial electric vehicle order in the UK to accelerate our Planet goal to be a net zero business. And we’ve been helping our customers transition to net zero through a range of initiatives, including providing zero carbon electricity to all UK customers in 2020/21, alongside a route-to-market for renewables with 11.7GW under management. This has enabled customers to save the equivalent annual emissions of around 1.6 million homes in 2021.

As a build to our People & Planet Plan, we also launched our Climate Transition Plan in 2021, setting out detailed plans for how we intend to deliver our net zero goals while ensuring a fair and affordable transition for all.

Chris O’Shea, Group Chief Executive said: “I’m pleased that we’ve made great progress against some of our goals during 2021 and I’m naturally disappointed that we’re behind on others. However, I knew that these goals would stretch us, and rightly so. The decade ahead won’t be easy, and there will be difficult decisions we’ll need to face into to achieve our goals. But I have confidence that together, we can and we will succeed.”

Find out more about our People & Planet Plan and the progress we’re making towards reshaping our future to one that’s fairer and more sustainable.