ESP’s Annual Sustainability Report FY21-22

Just the Facts

Our carbon emissions over the 2021-2022 financial year were 50% lower than 2020-2021.

This drop was driven by:

• A reduction in road travel for company-owned and staff vehicles due to COVID.
• Staff and client meetings being held online instead of in-person where possible within Auckland.
• Regional travel plans that focused on multiple site or client visits in a single trip.

After the change in alert levels, we continued to encourage people to “work where they’re most productive”, and most of our staff continue to work remotely. We have retained the best parts of the ‘new normal’ to aid our sustainability efforts.

About Us

ESP is an Auckland-based company made up of energy consultants and software developers with a goal to embed sustainability into every business’ performance.

We provide a combined offering of sustainability software and advisory, bringing businesses the data and expertise they need to take their next – or their first – steps towards carbon neutral.

Reporting Boundary

This report states the greenhouse gas emissions by Scope (as per the GHG Protocol) from ESP’s business activities for the period from 1st April 2021 to 31st March 2022.

This includes:

• Scope 1: Road travel in company-owned cars,
• Scope 2: Electricity Usage in the Auckland office
• Scope 3: Air travel, waste to landfill, incoming mail (often by airfreight) and outgoing mail (local and national road-freight), private staff cars and rental cars, both for existing clients and for sales proposals

Other emissions not currently included:

• Employee commuting.
• Recycled waste.
• Client visits on public transport and using private staff small vehicles (e-bikes & e-scooters).
• Embedded emissions in non-consumables (computers, printers whiteware, printers etc) and office supplies.

Future reporting will include some of the emissions omitted from this report, as ESP’s monitoring of different emissions sources widens.Calculated Emissions ESP’s greenhouse gas emissions by source are shown in the figure following

The baseline year for these emissions was 1st April 2019 to 31st March 2020.The emissions for air travel, road travel, waste-to-landfill and electricity were calculated using the Catalyst ACE (Annual Carbon Emissions) calculator, available from the Sustainable Business Network website.

The emissions for outgoing mail were calculated from data provided by Courier Post New Zealand, and the emissions for incoming mail were calculated from the mass and direct-flight distance travelled for each item.

The total emissions by Scope as tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents (tCO2e) for this period were:

Emissions by Scope

For more information about carbon footprint calculations check out this step-by-step instruction for SMEs.

Key Initiatives

• As ESP-owned ICE petrol & diesel vehicles are replaced with EVs, the road travel Scope 1 emission will move from Scope 1 to Scope 2.
• Gains made through grouping client visits and replacing visits with video meetings apply to all scopes depending on the financial year.

Company growth and swapping ICE vehicles for EVs contributes to increasing emissions from electricity usage.

• These increases will be partially offset through the new policy of allowing people to work from home; and
• Through a planned energy savings opportunity identification and implementation.

Trying to move the dial on your climate action and get ahead of the curve on your sustainability investment? Talk to the ESP team today to find out more about our range of carbon accounting and energy efficiency software.