Net Zero Plan

At L+C we understand the importance of reducing our carbon footprint in our engineering designs and specifications, and within our business operations to respond to the climate emergency.

We aim to reduce our business operational greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by the year 2030 and become net zero by the year 2050, in line with the requirements for keeping global temperature rise under 1.5⁰C.

We have acknowledged our target by signing The SME Climate Commitment to halve our emissions by 2030 and achieve net zero before 2050. https://smeclimatehub.org/sme-climate-commitment/

We have calculated our baseline annual operational greenhouse gas emissions for the April 2023 to April 2024 financial year. We will continue to calculate our significant scope emissions each year to monitor our progress towards net zero. Our scope data includes electricity, printing, waste, commute and business travel.

Our Scope 2 and 3 carbon emissions for April 2023 to April 2024:

Notes:

  1. All conversion factors used were extracted from: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/greenhouse-gas-reporting-conversion-factors-2023
  2. As the L+C office is within a shared building, we do not receive an electricity bill from our landlord based on our business’ electricity consumption. Therefore, our office electricity consumption data was taken from the median intensity value for Offices from the Non-Domestic National Energy Efficiency Data-Framework (ND-NEED) 2023 report, in kWh/m².

As an SME in a shared rented building, our Scope 2 emissions are relatively low. Our targets for reducing Scope 2 emissions are subject to increased renewable electricity supply from the current provider. We have no measurable Scope 1 emissions.

72% of our Scope 3 emissions are due to staff commuting and business travel. We do not travel internationally for our projects, and our emissions already benefit from our hybrid working policy from 2020. The majority of our employees commute to work and travel for business using public transportation (Network Rail and Transport for London). These transportation sources have their own targets for achieving net zero, which will improve our future usage emissions.

We aim to reduce our operational greenhouse gas emissions further by:

  • Maintaining and increasing the use of online meeting technology as an alternative to travel
  • Encouraging staff to walk or cycle to site visits and meetings within Central London
  • Encouraging staff to use public transport for site visits outside of London
  • Encouraging a paper free office to reduce staff printing, by electronic reading and marking-up
  • Switching to recycled paper in the office
  • Recycling or donating old office equipment
  • Working alongside our landlord to further reduce our operational emissions where possible
  • Finding ways to reduce electricity use in our office by switching off equipment when not in use, and turning off lights in unoccupied rooms
  • Neutralising our carbon emissions by offsetting through a recognised offsetting scheme

Further to reducing our operational carbon emissions, we are also working towards reduced embodied carbon in our design of structures. We are committed to delivering increasingly sustainable engineering solutions. In June 2024 we signed the Structural Engineers Declare commitment to advocate and raise awareness of the climate emergency, share knowledge and collaborate to minimize waste and embodied carbon.
https://www.structuralengineersdeclare.com/

We have recently assembled an L+C Green Team to establish in-house carbon tools and sustainability targets, and communicate carbon insights to the project team, clients and contractors. Please get in touch if you’d like to learn how we can improve the low-carbon outcomes of our projects together.