HS2 believes incentives are better than penalties to reduce carbon emissions in its supply chain, a senior member of the project has said.
Director of environment Peter Miller said the project is to set out carbon targets and form a new board to hold people to account for the reductions. He was speaking at the CN Decarbonising Construction online conference, where he was asked if there would be penalties for contractors who fail to meet its goals.
“We’re not looking at penalties; we’re looking at ways of encouraging our supply chain to do the right thing. It’s better to go about it like that,” Miller said.
“There is a collective endeavour about all of this. The remit from government about meeting net-zero by 2050 is probably the biggest incentive that hadn’t been with us a couple years ago, and now everyone is in the same boat,” he added.
The government’s net-zero target means the country should be producing no more carbon dioxide than it removes from the atmosphere by 2050.
Miller added that the body, which has been a regular target of environmental protests, is working closely with its procurement teams to ensure sustainability goals are met throughout its supply chain at the tendering stage. He said: “We now have integrated project teams within the project where our people are working alongside the supply chain, and that helps the whole process to be honest in terms of carbon.”
He concluded: “We’re going to have quite an influence through the build on how we are going to do things better in the future, and that will percolate through the industry.”
Elsewhere at the conference today, Skanska sustainability operations director Chris Hayes outlined the firm’s strategy for reducing carbon, which considers its supply chain’s emissions under its own net-zero target. He urged companies it works with to come forward with ideas for innovations in the area.
