As an organisation we are committed to the green agenda. We aim to prioritise and embed environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles across all our business activities.
As part of our commitment to environmental, social and governance issues we’ve recently bought a fleet of environmentally friendly, fully electric cars and vans for use by our staff when carrying out their jobs. These will replace our aging company vehicles that are nearing the end of their expected life. All the new vehicles are environmentally friendly, fully electric and emission free.
In December 2020 the UK government set ambitious emissions targets to meet the aim of becoming net zero by 2050. Point four of the 10-point plan talks about reducing emissions from road transportation to zero. This is being done in two parts, the first step being to end sales of petrol and diesel cars by 2030. For the second step, all new cars and vans will need to be emission free at the tailpipe from 2035. Because of this the government are offering various incentives to going fully electric, including grants and tax incentives allowing us to recognise some of our green commitments now and plan for the future.
Benefits of electric vehicles
Apart from the obvious benefit to the environment, electric vehicles pay no congestion charge and are generally cheaper to run and maintain than petrol or diesel vehicles. Charging the vehicles is quick and trouble-free. Charging to full capacity takes between five and 10 hours so will be simple to plug in overnight when they are parked up at our offices. We even benefitted from a government grant which covered some of the cost of installing the charging points at our offices.
Alongside other initiatives, going fully electric should also help us to secure sustainable sources of finance in the near future, boosting our ability to invest both in existing properties as well as in new homes.