Sustainable business is not a conjuring trick

AES Engineering’s Sustainability Report for 2023 shows that we went beyond Net Zero in for the third year running with a positive environmental impact equivalent to a forest of 15 million trees.

There is understandable curiosity about how we managed this during a period of rapid expansion, with sales from UK exports now over £100 million annually and turnover up 38% to £261 million since we started on our Net Zero journey three years ago.

This is not a conjuring trick – it’s down to the leap of faith taken by many of our customers. They had to change outdated practices and introduce new technologies to become more productive, profitable and environmentally friendly.

How does positive results on our customers’ carbon footprints make AES Engineering ‘Net Zero’? It’s all about how we balance the harm done to the environment by our direct, and indirect energy use (Scope 1 & Scope 2), and the negative impact of our supply chain (Scope 3).

The supply chain, for understandable reasons, is often the missing link in most Net Zero journey even though this can be huge compared with direct and indirect energy use. In the case of AES Engineering Ltd group, Scope 3 emissions for 2023 were over 129,000 tonnes of CO2e equivalent, compared with under 5,000 tonnes for the combined impacts of Scope 1 & 2.

In order to reach Net Zero, or go beyond, AES Engineering and our main global brands AESSEAL and AVT Reliability need to show that our market activities have a compensating positive effect in our value chain – among our customers.

For the 2023 period, AES products and activities produced a reduction of 433,879 tonnes of CO2e in the operational emissions of other organisations – three times greater than the Scope 3 ‘penalty’ due to emissions in the group’s supply chain of 129,812 tonnes CO2e. The value of avoided emissions from products sold has been verified by BSI as part of the ISO 14064-1 assessment.

This brings the net positive impact over the three years AES has gone ‘beyond net zero’ to just under 1 million tonnes CO2e (943,631 tonnes) - the equivalent to the annual carbon reducing impact of around 15 million trees, or 7,500 hectares (16,500 acres) of forest.

In parallel, for the part of our carbon footprint that we directly control, I am delighted that we have managed to lower in absolute terms our Scope 1 and Scope 2 (direct and indirect energy) footprint.

During October 2022 to the September 2023, the audited market-based carbon dioxide equivalent emissions of AES Engineering Ltd were:

• Scope 1: 2,330 tonnes CO2e
• Scope 2: 1,538 tonnes CO2e
• Scope 3: 129,812 tonnes CO2e

Scope 1 & 2 operational emissions are down in absolute terms and also, as a proportion of turnover, are 34% and 43% lower respectively than in 2019-2020. This was achieved by buying green energy, installing solar panels and other environmental investments as part of the group’s 29by29 pledge to invest £29 million ($40 million) in the environment by 2029. The remaining direct and indirect carbon footprint was offset in 2023 by purchasing 5,007 tonnes of credits through Gold Standard and VERRA schemes.

The forest of 15 million trees with which we compare our environmental results is imaginary, but the impact is real. And because we love trees, as part of our 29x29 pledge, we have invested just under £1 million to plant 109,000 trees in County Fermanagh and are also looking at other land to buy and plant more trees.

This will never be enough to solve climate change on its own. For that to happen we need to change attitudes in both suppliers and customers so that we are, at least, as efficient as we can possibly be in our use of the planet’s precious resources.

So, once again, not magic, just a whole lot of attention to detail, and a real commitment to doing what we can to ensure that the planet remains habitable for our children and grandchildren.

Download the AES Engineering Sustainability Report

AES Engineering Ltd, and its Partners have also produced a document in relation to projects that have had a positive sustainability impact in 2023.

Click here to read the Sustainability Report