Sky's Environment Programme

Climate change is one of the biggest challenges we’ve ever faced. We know that, acting together with our customers, we can make a difference. We’re always looking for ways to go greener and at how we can inspire others to do the same.

We’ve made good progress so far - improvements to the energy efficiency of our set top boxes have helped customers save approximately 90,000 tonnes of CO2 a year and we’ve reduced our net greenhouse gas emissions from our operations by around 12% since 2003, at a time when our business has grown substantially. But there’s a lot more we can do and in October 2008 we created a high-level Environment Steering Group to lead our activity on screen and behind the scenes. This group meets regularly, is chaired by our Chief Executive, Jeremy Darroch, and includes senior managers whose actions can achieve carbon reductions across the business and for customers.

In April 2009 we were awarded the Carbon Trust Standard for companies taking real action to reduce their carbon emissions. Our achievements were also recognised with a Green Award from the Federation of Communication Services and a Big Tick for Environmental Leadership from Business in the Community.

Our environment strategy is divided into two parts: Inspiring action and Minimising our environmental impact. For more information on these, please click on the links below.

Programming

We air lots of programmes which highlight environmental issues throughout the year. We bring these to our viewers’ attention particularly on Earth Day and World Environment Day. We tie these in with offers to our employees and customers.

Minimising our environmental impact

In addition to inspiring others to act, we believe in taking action ourselves and are currently working to minimise our company’s environmental footprint. Our environment policy forms the basis of our internal management. It has defined objectives and targets that direct our activities in relation to our operations, products and even our supply chain.

Sky’s overall target is to cut its CO2 emissions by 25% (per £m/turnover) across its business by 2020.  In addition, the company plans to make its buildings 20% more energy efficient and to obtain 20% of its energy requirements for all its owned buildings from onsite renewable energy in the same time frame.  By 2012, Sky will cut the carbon emissions from its fleet of vans by 25% (per van) and carbon emissions from employee business travel by a further 20% (per FTE). We also have a target to cut the total energy consumption of newly installed Sky+HD boxes by 30% by 2012, and will be working with 50 of its most carbon intensive suppliers to help them measure their carbon footprint and reduce emissions further.

Take a look at our environment policies, objectives and targets.