At O2

We want good environmental practice to become a way of life at O2 and we had a busy year implementing measures to reduce our energy consumption.

These included the negotiation of new energy contracts that will supply us with 100 per cent renewable energy, starting from July 1, 2008.

In addition we introduced:

• A £1.4 million investment in ‘smart metering’ for our cell sites, retail stores, offices and switch sites, enabling us to accurately measure energy use and improve efficiency.
• Advanced boiler controls to reduce our gas consumption - by over 20 per cent in one office.
• Greater control of air conditioning in our offices, saving more than 9 per cent of energy use at some locations.
• Trials of new network equipment that will give us over 15 per cent in energy savings. This is now our future standard.
• Replacement of 4,000 50 watt spot lights with 5 watt LEDs in our retail stores, thus saving around 240 tonnes of CO2 in the year.

During the year we achieved Accreditation to the Energy Efficiency Accreditation Scheme run by the Carbon Trust for the UK Government. We are one of four companies in the UK who participated in the Carbon Trust Strategic Insight Review.

O2 wins local award

At the home of our headquarters, Slough, we picked up an Environment Business Resources Efficiency Award, in recognition of improvements in our energy management over a two-year period. We were pleased to gain local endorsement from a community in which we operate.

O2 and you

Our environmental projects aim to win the hearts of our customers and employees.

During the year we signed up as a founder member of the Climate Group’s ‘Together’ campaign. The campaign aims to galvanise UK businesses to offer customers green choices. Each member undertook to develop a new product or service.  In April 2007 we announced our Energy Saver options.

‘Together’ is independently approved by The Climate Group, an international charity dedicated to working with business and government. Members of the campaign, who include O2, M&S, Tesco, BSkyb and Barclaycard, have all launched products or ideas to make it easier for customers to do something about climate change.  Since launch in April 2007, 200,000 tonnes of CO2 have been saved. The latest CO2 savings can be found at www.together.com