Equal Experts UK Ltd is committed to achieving Net Zero Carbon emissions by 2030. We have brought this date forward since our previous report in November 2021.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions reporting

We calculate and report on our greenhouse gas emissions based on our financial year (FY), which starts in April, not by calendar year. 

	Reporting period
Emissions	Baseline FY 2019/20	FY 2020/21	Current FY 2021/22
Scope 1	0	0	0
Scope 2	847.4	3.4	2.2
Scope 3	n/a	162.6	177.8
Total	847.4	166.0	180.0

Table 1: Summary of our emissions for the last 3 years (all figures in tCO2e)

Notes on our reporting

• We are using standard tons of CO2e emissions (tCO2e) and financial year 2019/20 as our Baseline for reporting purposes.
• We do not generate Scope 1 emissions as we do not own any vehicles or systems that directly burn fossil fuels.
• Scope 2 covers offices that are either leased or serviced only
• We generate and report Scope 3 emissions from the following sub-categories:
  • 6. Business travel
  • 7. Staff commuting (including work from home, known as ‘teleworking’)
• We do not undertake activities and therefore do not generate Scope 3 emissions in the following sub-categories:
  • 4. Upstream transportation and distribution activities
  • 5. Waste generated in operations
  • 9. Downstream transportation and distribution

Financial Year 2019/20 (Baseline)

• These are our emissions produced in the past, before reduction strategies and are the reference point against which future emissions and any plans to reduce them are measured.
• This was our first reporting period, as we did not have any data before the SECR reporting requirements were mandatory.
• Scope 3 – we did not measure in this baseline year and do not have the data to estimate.

Financial Year 2020/21

We re-calculated these in September 2022, to revisit our assumptions, particularly for Scope 3 emissions.

• Scope 2 emissions dropped as we spent less time in offices.
• Our Scope 3 emissions were as follows:
  • 6. Business travel – 0.7 tCO2e. This is low due to the Covid pandemic
  • 7. Staff commuting and working from home – 161.9 tCO2e from staff commuting, including working from home

Financial Year 2021/22

Our recalculation of the previous year and we reset our assumptions about Scope 3 usage to include estimates for working from home and better quality data from our travel records. 

• This led to a slight increase in Scope 2 in terms of electricity use.
• Our Scope 3 emissions were as follows:
  • 6. Business travel – 28 tCO2e from travel which increased due to increased travel after the Covid pandemic
  • 7. Staff commuting and working from home -149.8 tCO2e from staff commuting, including working from home

Emissions forecast

We have forecast our emissions over 5 years, using our new assumptions, particularly in measuring Scope 3 emissions. 

Figure 1: Actual vs forecast annual emissions

We project that our carbon emissions will decrease over the next five years to 200 tCO2e by the 2025/26 period. Whilst this is a significant reduction from our baseline in 2019/20, progress in the last 2 years has been driven by the pandemic and changes in working patterns as most work has been remote. We anticipate that as work patterns change, particularly with increased travel, our emissions will increase in the short term, and the opportunities to reduce them will be limited. 

Meeting our Net Zero Reduction Targets

Completed Carbon Reduction Initiatives

We have already completed these carbon emission reduction plans:

• Closed permanent offices in Manchester, Bristol and Brighton and moved to more flexible co-working spaces. 
• Consolidated suppliers for merchandise to use a single supplier with a strong focus on providing sustainable and environmentally suitable goods, particularly clothing. Also moved to finding local suppliers within each country to avoid shipping activities.
• We completed the work to reassess and improve the accuracy of our Scope 3 estimates.

Current Net Zero Projects

We are implementing these measures in our period 2023/24:

• Designing a carbon offset programme to invest in carbon reduction projects.

Scope 2

• Reviewing our office occupancy and using co-located spaces that achieve a BREEAM rating of Good or above.

Scope 3

• Supporting our staff to improve their home working spaces for energy saving through insulation and power efficiency including encouraging renewable energy sources.
• Working with Sedex and our subcontractors to ensure they also consider carbon emissions.
• Collaborating with cloud technology providers Amazon, Google and Microsoft, to help our large-scale customers optimise cloud usage to reduce energy consumption.

Board Approval

This Carbon Reduction Plan has been completed in accordance with PPN 06/21 and associated guidance and reporting standards for Carbon Reduction Plans. 

Emissions have been recorded and reported in accordance with the published reporting standard for Carbon Reduction Plans and the GHG Reporting Protocol using the appropriate Government emission conversion factors for greenhouse gas company reporting.

Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions have been reported following SECR requirements, and the required subset of Scope 3 emissions have been reported following the published reporting standard for Carbon Reduction Plans and the Corporate Value Chain Standard.

This Carbon Reduction Plan has been reviewed and signed off by the board of directors.

Sam McGregor – Chief Operating Officer – 12th December 2022