Decarbonising our business

By reducing our energy consumption and improving the efficiency of our real estate and wider operations, we are minimising our environmental impact.

As one of the UK’s largest landowners, we have a responsibility to decarbonise the assets we hold. We’re taking steps to do this across our entire portfolio, which includes historic buildings, tenanted farms and the seabed.

Improving data and processes is critical to achieving this. We’re working with managing agents, data scientists, expert advisers, our supply chain and a team of best-in-class engineers to look in detail at how we collect energy performance data and how energy is managed at a granular level, building by building. We’ve also installed solar panels, wind turbines and biomass generators at our sites which contribute increasingly to our renewable energy mix. Where we refurbish existing properties – many of which are classed as historical - we are making significant investments to take a low-carbon, sustainable approach.

Together, this activity led to a 15% reduction in our energy consumption in 2023/24.

Looking ahead, expanding our existing data sets will allow us to build a complete, enterprise-wide view of our carbon footprint across our entire operations and activities, which will help us focus attention where we can have the most impact, and develop net zero targets in line with science and the latest industry best practice.

In 2023 we published our net zero update which sets out our progress since setting our net zero targets in 2020, and our approach to cutting carbon emissions. We’re currently updating our carbon targets for all our business areas and will publish an updated net zero update later in 2024.