Sky UK Update on Progress Toward 2030 Net Zero Carbon Goal

Sky (Sky Broadband) has just published their annual Bigger Picture Impact Report 2019, which reveals how much progress they’ve made toward their goal of becoming a net zero carbon business by 2030 (#GoZero). So far they’ve cut their Group carbon intensity from 6.9 tCO2e/£m revenue in 2018 to 6.54 tCO2e/£m in 2019.

Sky’s baseline for all this was set in 2018, when their total carbon emissions were about 2,026,456 (tCO2e) and 64% of those came from the use of their tech products, while 30% were via their supply chain, 4% from operations, 1% from business travel and the final 1% from employee commuting.

In 2019 the group – including Sky’s businesses in the UK, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy – reported a 5% reduction in carbon intensity, a 7% reduction in absolute carbon emissions, a 15% reduction in total waste and a 4% increase in renewable energy generated on their sites.

Over 2018 and 2019 all of Sky’s main data centres in the UK also switched to purchase renewable energy, reducing their overall UK and Ireland carbon footprint from 11,962 tCO2e in 2018 to 9,271 tCO2e. Some 70% of all their energy use now comes from renewable electricity or district heating.

Jeremy Darroch, Sky’s Group CEO, said:

“We are entering a critical decade on the long road to climate recovery, and all businesses have the opportunity to accelerate progress and become part of the solution.

In February 2020, we confirmed our most ambitious commitment yet on climate action by setting a 2030 target for Sky Zero. And already in 2019, we became the first broadcaster to offset the emissions to of all our UK-commissioned Sky Originals – an important milestone on our path to net zero carbon, in addition to already being carbon neutral for our operations since 2006.”

By 2030 Sky now intends to convert 5,000 vehicles (engineering vans, company cars, broadcast vehicles and shuttle buses) to a zero emissions fleet, eliminate avoidable waste, double resource productivity and deliver a 50% cut in emissions created by the use of their tech products. Speaking of which..

“Since March 2020, our new broadband contracts follow a service model with Sky retaining ownership of the equipment. That way, we can ensure it’s used to full capacity and where appropriate, refurbished, reused or recycled. We hope this will enable us to manufacture 14% fewer new routers,” added the operator.

Sky has also pushed for carbon emission reductions in their product manufacturing. “This year, we worked collaboratively with our engineering and manufacturing partners to change the design of our products. With them we industrialised new selective molten solder machines, that save up to 60% of the energy required to make a traditional circuit board and rolled them out to all our factories,” said Sky.

Meanwhile they’re also planting trees, mangroves and seagrass to help absorb the carbon it can’t cut. We should add that, over the past 10 years, Sky has already reduced their carbon intensity by more than 55% and cut business travel emissions by over 30% for the UK & Ireland.