Climate change
We're focusing our 2006 Sustainability Report on climate change, because it's the single biggest issue facing our industry. We are currently the UK's largest single emitter of carbon dioxide, and the electricity generation sector as a whole is responsible for around 37% of the country's emissions; power stations were responsible for around 31.5% in 2005 according to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). We know climate change is real and because of the nature of our business, we believe we have a responsibility to do something about it.
We're the only UK power company to have set ourselves a long-term target to reduce our carbon intensity, starting with a reduction of 10% by 2012 compared with our 2005 levels. We expect the majority of this reduction to be delivered between 2009 and 2012 due to the timing of new capacity coming online. In fact, the carbon intensity of our electricity generation portfolio has already fallen by over 20% since 1990, the baseline year of the Kyoto protocol, although our carbon intensity has risen 3.48% since 2005. Through our own initiatives and in partnership with Government and other stakeholders, we are working to reduce our impact and raise awareness of climate change among our customers and employees. We are investing in new technologies that enable us to produce energy from existing fossil fuel sources in a more sustainable way, increasing our renewables capability and working to develop energy efficiency initiatives, not just for ourselves, but for our customers too. We see emissions trading, through the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), as an important mechanism for tackling climate change.
This section looks at the activities we are undertaking to minimise our impacts in this area, and covers:
