Thank you all for attending our sustainability event which saw us bring pan defence customers, industry, and wider BT together to look deeper at the greater-than-ever risks and pressures to digitally transform our operations to become more sustainable. The event saw us bring customers from across defence, wider industry, and our excellent speakers from partners cisco and n2s, as well as sustainability pioneers Openreach and national trust. We were able to explore ways of using digital to tackle our targets through carbon baselining, smart buildings, bioleaching of tech, EV fleets and much more.
Below is a short synopsis of each of the speakers’ presentations:
Sarwar shared BT’s sustainability credentials some of which include ranking 3rd in the FTSE100 by EcoAct, 1st in Tortoise Media Climate100 index in the UK FTSE100 as well as using 100% renewable electricity for our networks and data centres since 2020. We’ve found our customers sustainability challenges lie in measuring carbon emissions, procuring sustainable products & services and reducing operational energy carbon and emissions. Sarwar shared some of the services BT provide to help our customers with these challenges such as the Digital Carbon Calculator and Carbon Network Dashboard.
Steve and Phil talked us through N2S’s journey to creating a circular more sustainable approach to net zero. Sharing the process in recovering assets, sanitising data, and giving them a second life. They also talked us through their innovative bioleaching process to extract rare materials from e-waste, helping regenerate revenue and tackling the risk of scarcity of materials.
The IT industry is responsible for 2%-4% of global greenhouse gases but, The World Economic Forum believe we have the potential to suppress / address 20% of current emissions. Stu discussed the importance of defining a circular economy and realising waste is a resource alongside unlocking the power of data through solutions such as building utilisation to make more sustainable and cost-saving choices.
Andrew shared Openreach’s objectives driving their sustainability agenda through removing single use plastics, reducing waste, and decarbonising the business. The main effort of decarbonisation is through their EV Fleet programme. Andrew shared the lessons and challenges of introducing 1000 low/zero emission vehicles into service and how they aim to double this year-on-year.
About a quarter of all global greenhouse gas emissions result from agricultural activity on cultivated land that is cumulatively the size of Asia. Jon shared how through sustainable farming practices, renewable energy and technology are helping them to cut their carbon emissions and the importance of utilising data to achieve this.
As our final presentation for the day we had James Clare director of Climate Change & Sustainability for the MoD share the importance of climate change and sustainability for the MoD. James shared with us the impact that climate change will have on where we operate, who we operation, what we operate and how we operate. Climate change will impact all functions of Defence and James shared the steps they’re taking to undergo this transformational change.
