Environmental Statement
Statement
For several years we have been taking steps to reduce our carbon footprint; by recycling in our offices, moving to renewable energy suppliers, and using power saving where possible. Unfortunately, our industry uses huge amounts of energy that contributes to climate change, and we realised that we had a part to play in that.
PTP has been net zero since 2020. We have also been independently audited by Carbon Footprint Ltd, and for 2020 (which was an unusual year), our total company footprint was 119.68 tCO2.
Our goal is to get to zero emissions as soon as possible, and along with our energy efficiency and carbon reduction policies, we have several internal projects in the pipeline to help achieve that goal. In the meantime, we want to minimise our impact, and have invested in several external carbon offsetting projects in the UK and abroad. We are also talking to our suppliers about their environmental impact, and encouraging everyone at PTP to play a part.
Our journey
Ken Munro, founding partner:
PTP started out as a working-from-home ‘virtual’ operation, with minimal travel being a big thing for everyone.
As our admin functions grew, we needed a small office in the interim. A small team worked from my outbuildings, which had some energy efficiency features, but not much.
After a couple of years of growth, we took on a small office unit nearby. All the office staff were based nearby, so travel was still minimised. I usually walk in, others often cycle in.
The office is modern and well insulated. Heating is from air source heat pumps which also offer air conditioning, though we almost never use the air conditioning.
Our lighting was originally from fluorescent tubes. They used over 3kW of electricity so were changed for LED panels, saving over 2kW.
Our servers are hosted in two Data Centres, probably our biggest power draw. One has already committed to using a renewable electricity supplier in the short term, the other is investigating its potential.
Most of our work is remote, though in the past roughly a quarter was at customer sites. The Coronavirus lockdown has resulted in increased numbers of clients permitting remote testing of internal networks to be carried out. Some on site work remains and often car travel is the only practical way to get to client sites.
Our office has Electric Vehicle car chargers which anyone on the team can use for free, to encourage migration to EVs. Many of the business principals already have EVs and we are at the late stages of implementing an EV scheme to help reduce the costs of electric vehicles for our team.
We will shortly be fitting a 20kW solar PhotoVoltaics array with supporting storage batteries to drive our carbon usage negative. In the meantime, we have offset our carbon emissions through a tree planting scheme.
There is plenty more to do, but we are well on the way to becoming a carbon sink rather than a carbon source.
March 2023 update
We now have a 30kW solar PhotoVoltaic array. These should put close to 30,000 kWh onto the grid annually, which easily covers usage in our office buildings, and goes some way to offsetting the electricity use of our home workers.
Read about our journey here.
You can review our carbon neutral certificate here.
