Decarbonisation Plan
Date: 9th May 2025
Our Commitment to achieving Net Zero
Vercity was independently certified as Carbon Neutral in 2024, by Carbon Neutral Britain, with VERRA or Gold Standard offset schemes only. Our commitment to going beyond this, to achieve Net Zero, continues unwavered.
Baseline Emissions
Baseline emissions are a record of the greenhouse gases that have been produced in the past and were produced prior to the introduction of any strategies to reduce emissions. Baseline emissions are the reference point against which emissions reduction can be measured.
Baseline Year: 2022
When Vercity started collecting emissions data, it was focused on business travel and office utilities. Our approach to data gathering and analysis continues to improve, becoming more sophisticated and broader, to the point that we opted to re-baseline in 2022 because we were gathering a larger amount of actual emissions data than we had in the past, with less assumptions applied (where actual data is unavailable).
Furthermore, 2022 is considered an appropriate baseline year because the direct effects of Covid were behind us, and resulting new working practices were initially embedded in, including hybrid working, and reduced business travel and commuting.
For example, emissions from business grey fleet vehicle travel in 2018 was 150 tCO2e, in 2020 it was 61 tCO2e, and with 2022 it was more settled, at 81 tCO2e.
Normalising our Data
We expect to continue our growth path that has been established in recent years. Therefore, to ensure transparent and comparable data, we are normalising our data to put it on a per-person basis, using Vercity’s headcount.
Year-on-year Decarbonisation
Between 2018 and 2022, we reduced the ton of CO2 that we had responsibility for, by 26.4% and, in 2024, we improved by a further 8.3% from our 2022 baseline, achieving just under 1 tCO2e per employee.
Emissions reduction targets
In order to continue our progress to achieving Net Zero, we have set a goal to reduce our carbon emissions by 90% over the next fifteen years.
Carbon Reduction Projects and Environmental Management
Vercity was independently certified carbon neutral in 2024, by Carbon Neutral Britain. With VERRA or Gold Standard offset schemes only.
Since 2022 our carbon reduction projects, and environmental management measures have a delivered a reduction of 0.9 tCO2e per employee. These include:
- a reduction of our permanent office footprint (with a higher utilisation density)
- a refinement of our hybrid working policy (whilst delivering on commitments to have on-site presence at all our projects)
- increased use of public transport (versus ‘grey fleet) delivered a 20 tCO2e reduction
- improved use collaboration technology and platforms
- working only with new office landlords who have committed the provision of green energy
- employee training on the climate impact of personal choices (such as energy usage while remote working) delivered an 18% reduction per employee in related emissions.
While Vercity is achieving year on year emissions reduction per employee, we recognise that key factors are only in our ability to influence, such as 68.5% of 2024 business travel was by our grey fleet – so we are encouraging the transition to away from combustion engine cars to electric.
Vercity is ISO 14001 : 2015 – Environmental management system accredited by BSI. And ESOS certify to the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) phase 3.
Declaration and Sign Off
Our 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 reported and recorded in accordance with the published reporting standard for Carbon Reduction Plans and the GHG Reporting Protocol corporate standard and uses the appropriate Government emission conversion factors for greenhouse gas company reporting.
“Scope 1” and “Scope 2” emissions have been reported in accordance with SECR requirements, and the required subset of “Scope 3” emissions have been reported in accordance with the published reporting standard for Carbon Reduction Plans and the Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard.
This Carbon Reduction Plan has been reviewed and signed off by the Senior Leadership Team and Board.