Becoming a net zero carbon company | Rolls-Royce

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Becoming a net zero carbon company

Our journey to becoming a net zero business

Innovating our way to net zero

We will cut the carbon emissions of our operations and activities to net zero by 2030, excluding product testing and development.

Our production sites, activities and other facilities are in the process of being decarbonised. To meet our net zero commitment, further innovation will be needed. We must continue to think radically about how we operate and drive forward research and development to provide clean, safe and competitive solutions.

Our progress so far

We are doing everything we can to reduce the environmental impacts of our operations and have already made good progress.

In 2015 we set ourselves a series of operational targets. These have helped us to cut our greenhouse gas emissions by 187,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent since 2014. Here are some of our other achievements since then.

£184m

Invested in sustainable, energy efficient new facilities

40%

Reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (scope 1 & 2)

29%

Reduction in energy consumption per £1m revenue

71%

Reduction in waste sent to landfill

How we will get to net zero

We’re proud of what we have achieved so far, but we know we have further to go.

Reducing our energy use
Energy efficiency is vital to achieving our net zero 2030 goal.

We have invested over £30m in energy efficiency improvement projects since 2014.

These include upgrading lighting, updating heating and networked building management systems.

We expect to spend about the same again over the next five years to help us hit our target of net zero.

On-site deployment of renewables and low carbon technology

We have cut absolute CO2 emissions by 50% since 2014 by introducing renewable and low carbon technologies at our sites.

At our facilities in Singapore, the UK, Europe and North America, we have installed solar panels as part of a global initiative called Project Sunshine.

Our ground source heat pump and solar thermal hybrid technology project enables us to collect, store and provide heat at our site in Bristol, UK, throughout the year.

We plan to increase the proportion of our global energy requirements with on-site renewables or low carbon technologies from its current 25%.

Sunshine in Singapore

With over 2,000 hours of sunshine per year, Singapore is an ideal place to generate solar power.

Sunshine in Singapore

At our Seletar campus, we designed the manufacturing, training and research hub with sustainability in mind.

Particular attention was paid to:

  • energy and water efficiency
  • environmental protection
  • indoor environmental quality
  • and high environmental building performance.

It is one of the largest solar photovoltaic installations in Singapore with 11,700 solar photovoltaic panels.

The solar power installation generates enough electricity to meet around 8% of the site’s demand. Over its lifetime, it will save over 39,000 tonnes of CO2, equivalent to taking almost 5,000 cars off the road.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT PROJECT SUNSHINE

Bristol site to hit net zero carbon by 2023

Our Bristol facility will be the first to reach our net zero goal by 2023. How will we do this?

Bristol site to hit net zero carbon by 2023

13,000 roof mounted solar panels have been providing renewable electricity to the facility since 2016.

In 2018 we started to provide renewable heat to the buildings and processes through the installation of an award-winning ground source heat pump (GSHP) to displace a proportion of fossil fuel use on site. In 2019 we switched its UK electricity supply contract to a green supplier.

Mamta Bhasin, Global Category Manager – Supplier Sourcing & Strategy, Asia Pacific, Rolls-Royce

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“Solar is an important and inexhaustible source of energy. Being able to harness natural energy and use it to power our operations will enable us to reduce the environmental impact of our operations and gain greater pricing certainty for the future.”

Buying in renewable energy
Where we are unable to produce our own renewable or low carbon energy, we seek to buy in 100% renewable energy.

In 2019, we switched our facilities in the UK and Germany to electricity contracts backed by the Renewable Energy Guarantee of Origin (REGO) scheme. This reduced our emissions under greenhouse gas reporting frameworks by 21%.

Over the next three years, we are looking to buy in more renewable electricity and natural gas as supplies increase.

Closed-loop manufacturing
Components made of exotic materials are critical to the safety and efficiency of our products.

We use over 20,000 tonnes of high-value metal alloys each year. We work to reuse as much metal as we can through our closed-loop recycling programme.

This saves approximately 300,000 megawatt hours of energy and 80,000 tonnes of CO2 per year.

Moving forward, we’re also designing more re-usable materials into our products and building new supply chains for these where needed.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT REVERT
Reducing our emissions using our own products
Deploying our own innovative energy solutions at our own sites.

At our manufacturing facility in Friedrichshafen, Germany, we have installed a microgrid. Gas engines are combined with battery and solar photovoltaic panels to provide 30% of the site’s energy demand.

We hope to make use of our cutting-edge research on electrification and sustainable fuels, including hydrogen, to further reduce fossil fuel use across our operations.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT MICROGRIDS

Stefanie Cray, Business Development Manager Microgrids, Friedrichshafen, Rolls-Royce

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“Our microgrid helps us to reduce our energy costs and carbon emissions on-site, while allowing us to demonstrate system and component behaviour in real time.”

Microgrid solutions can provide the intelligent use of energy from renewable sources for our customers as well.

A country’s Armed Forces account for a significant proportion of Government-generated carbon emissions. In the case of the UK, the MOD accounts for 50% and the figure is even higher in the US. As the MOD modernises its estate, the application of a microgrid could not only provide a significant first step for a military base seeking to reduce its emissions, but also drive a much more efficient and cost effective use of energy.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT MICROGRIDS

Rigorous and safe testing is our most important challenge
Product safety testing is a critical part of engine development

We will seek to mitigate the emissions associated with product testing by increasing the use of lower carbon alternative fuels as availability rises, and using digital modelling and other technologies to replace some physical testing where appropriate in our product testing regime. We recognise the need to ensure these activities are aligned with our decarbonisation goals and are committed to working with customers, regulators and industry partners to explore ways to meet our product testing demands without generating carbon emissions.

As an interim measure we are committed to carrying out 10% of our civil aerospace testing activities with SAF by 2023 and have tied executive remuneration to this goal.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT TESTING

Beyond 2030

The next frontier of our net zero operations challenge will be moving from net zero power to net zero heat.

We will mainly target heat use in our buildings and manufacturing processes. This presents another opportunity to harness our own innovations.

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