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• Sustainability
  • Climate change and energy
  • Driving environmental-value
  • Working together
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  • Progress against 2008/09 targets
  • Plans for the year ahead
  • Adviser’s statement
• Financial Review

Sustainability

At The Crown Estate we have a corporate responsibility, not just for today but for future generations, to ensure that we bring benefits to our own business and at the same time benefit the economy, and the communities and environments in which we operate.

"Managing our buildings sustainably can enhance their long-term value and save money for our tenants."

This is The Crown Estate’s vision for sustainability. It owes its origins to an extensive review of our approach to delivering sustainability ensuring that it is truly embedded within our organisational structure and business strategy. The review, undertaken over the past year, has already resulted in a much deeper understanding of how sustainability is a core feature of our business and is explicit in the diligent and responsible management of our varied assets across our marine, rural and urban environments.

I am particularly proud that we are able to communicate in this report on the unique ability of The Crown Estate to support innovation in the renewables sector. The marine estate team has long been central to the successful development of offshore wind energy technology and is now playing a similar role in exploring the opportunities for wave and tidal power.

At the same time, there is ongoing work to understand the possibility of renewable energy generation across our rural estate. The urban estate has a role to play in its use of electricity from climate change levy exempt sources and through investigating the installation of renewables on-site.

The review has also resulted in the restructuring of our sustainability governance and a re-evaluation of our long-term sustainability aims, evidence of which is our decision to recruit a specialist. Much of this work is ongoing and we have therefore decided to focus on our performance in the past year in this report and fully launch our revised strategy in autumn 2009. At this point we will be in a position to set out our long-term targets and discuss in depth how sustainability will be effectively managed throughout The Crown Estate.

We have long recognised that it makes sound business sense to conduct business in a responsible and sustainable manner and this has been essential in order for us to live up to our values of commercialism, integrity and stewardship. A recognition of the value of sustainability is now of even greater importance as the world economy struggles with recession. There is no room in successful business for sustainability as a ‘bolt-on’; only a truly embedded sustainability strategy will be able to deliver real value.

Vivienne King Director (with responsibility for sustainability)

Addressing opportunities, risks and challenges

Running our business in a sustainable manner means that we are presented with real opportunities.

• We have an exciting chance to realise the commercial potential of renewable energy generation in the UK.
• We are exploring the carbon sequestration potential of our rural and marine assets and are also looking into other ways of quantifying the non-financial value of our assets.
• Managing our buildings sustainably can enhance their long-term value and save money for our tenants.
• Ensuring that sustainability is part of the design process for new developments will create more marketable, usable and healthy buildings.
• Working to create sustainable communities will ensure the long-term success of our business and the tenants on whom we depend.

There are also certain risks and challenges associated with sustainability within our business strategy. Like many of our real estate industry peers, we are managing our capital expenditure very carefully and this can mean that sustainability improvements to building stock are delayed. However, we expose ourselves to risk if we do not, for example, continue to work hard to monitor and reduce both our impact on the environment and how the environment impacts us, especially with the tightening of regulations such as the Carbon Reduction Commitment. We are mindful of this risk and despite minimising capital expenditure as much as possible, this does not mean that we are failing to make any sustainable improvements to our assets. For example, Windsor Great Park has invested £304,000 on installing energy efficient windows at some of its domestic tenancies (this accounted for 19% of Windsor’s total housing investment this year). Within the urban estate the housing business group invested £3.4 million in its housing stock to improve its environmental performance.

Balancing the different aspects of sustainability can be a challenge. An action which is positive in terms of reducing carbon emissions – such as investment in tidal and offshore wind power – may not necessarily be good for local biodiversity. Similarly production of renewable energy through development of offshore wind farms may raise environmental concerns about ‘industrialisation’ of the sea but it is a case of balancing one long-term environmental imperative – CO₂ reduction – against another – protection of the marine environment and following our core values.

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