Carbon Scrutiny Board
Annual report 2012/13

Performance Summary 
•	In 2012/13, we produced 406 tonnes of CO2 emissions.  This is a fall of 73 tonnes, which represents a 15.2 per cent decrease compared with last year.
•	By the end of 2012/13 our reduction in CO2 emissions has significantly surpassed our total five-year targeted reduction of 107 tonnes1. Over the last two years alone, we have reduced our CO2 emissions by 131 tonnes.
1.	During 2012/13 we continued to make positive progress in reducing our CO2 emissions. Our energy use has decreased significantly, primarily due to our office rationalisations in the last year. We have seen noticeable reductions in CO2 emissions from business travel and our fleet of leased cars continues to be more environmentally friendly.  
2.	During the year Audit Scotland's management team demonstrated its commitment to reducing our environmental impact further by: introducing an emissions cap for new leased cars; taking travelling patterns into account in relocating our west office from East Kilbride to Glasgow; and continuing to support investment in more energy efficient ICT hardware.
3.	As highlighted in previous reports, data availability and reliability continue to be a challenge in making accurate assessments of our overall emissions. During 2012/13 we made strides in improving our data with the introduction of the electronic expenses claim system.  This allows us to capture and analyse information on our business travel more effectively.  However, more still needs to be done to improve the capture of energy and waste data. We believe this, and building energy efficiency, should be an important consideration in plans for our office move in Edinburgh.
4.	We are entering into the final year of our carbon management plan. Our plan committed us to achieving a 20 per cent reduction in our emissions between 2009 and 2014.  We revised our plan in 2011, following which our overall targeted reduction in emissions was recalculated at 107 tonnes CO2.  Although accurate comparisons with our baseline are difficult due to changes in data recording (particularly around car emissions), it is clear that we have surpassed our goal.
5.	Our plan comprised seven projects, five of which are expected to deliver long-term savings and carbon reductions. In this report, we highlight performance against these seven projects during 2012/13. 
6.	During 2013/14 the carbon scrutiny board will be working with relevant stakeholders to develop a new and ambitious carbon management plan from 2014 onwards.

Energy use 
Property
Carbon management plan: project 1
Project lead: David Hanlon
Target: 
•	Reduce the amount of energy we use by rationalising our property portfolio.
2012/13 performance:
CO2 emissions from energy consumption fell by around 65 tonnes compared with 2011/12 (41 less tonnes from electricity and 24 less tonnes from gas consumption).
We consumed 206,935 KWh less energy from gas and electricity.
7.	During 2012/13 we consumed a total of 1,043,795 Kwh of energy (gas plus electricity) across our offices.  This produced the equivalent of 258 tonnes of CO2. 
8.	Much of our reduction in energy consumption has resulted from our office rationalisation over the past couple of years.  This has included the reduction in Edinburgh offices from three to two during 2011/12 and the closure of our Aberdeen office in June 2012.  We expect energy consumption to fall further during 2013 as we realise a full year's saving from closing the Aberdeen office and from the imminent move from East Kilbride to a smaller office in Glasgow. 
9.	As outlined below, we are continually striving to reduce the energy consumed by our ICT equipment.  We know that upgrading and reducing our ICT hardware is generating greater energy efficiency, although at present we are not fully able to identify the scale of savings.

 Since establishing our carbon reduction target in our 2009 carbon management plan, the data we use to calculate our emissions has been continually improving making comparisons over time increasingly difficult.

Information Communications Technology
Carbon management plan: project 2
Project lead: Allan Davie
Target: 	
•	Reduce the amount of energy used by ICT.
2012/13 performance: 
	   We have introduced a number of energy saving initiatives during the last year. 
10.	Reductions in energy use and emissions from ICT make a valuable contribution to our overall organisational reductions in energy use. The most significant impact of ICT has been through a reduction in our number of servers by seven in recent years.
11.	We targeted a range of projects for 2012/13 that could potentially reduce our power consumption further:
•	Reducing the number of switches in the data centre from seven to two: this is well under way.  At present we are unable to measure actual savings, however during the past year, we have also installed power monitoring equipment in our data centre, so we can manage and report on our energy consumption more effectively in future.
•	Upgrading the use of thin clients in ASG to reduce laptop use and save energy: we increased the number of thin clients from 284 to 330.  It is expected that Audit Services Group (ASG) may require around 30 less laptops as a result, resulting in energy savings.
•	Trialing timer switches in six banks of desks in 18 George Street to assess the impact of powering down all desks out of office hours: the trial went well and there is an obvious saving of energy (although it is not possible to quantity this specifically). As a result we are using the same approach in the Glasgow Office, with all 41 desks having timer switches to ensure that out of hours, we do not waste energy at these desks.
•	Network rationalisation to eliminate eight routers from the computer room: six network devices have been removed as a result of office rationalisation and a further two will be removed when we close the East Kilbride office. In rationalising our network hardware and/or replacing existing hardware with newer more energy efficient equipment we are also reducing our energy requirements for the cooling systems in our data centre. 
12.	We have begun to evaluate solid state disk drives in our servers in the Data Centre. They are not only around three times faster than existing mechanical disks but provide an 80 per cent power saving - each consumes only 4 watts of power compared with 20 watts for the existing drives, offering a total energy saving of around 1.7 Kwh.

Car travel and emissions
Carbon management plan: project 3
Project lead: directors
Target: 	
•	Reduce Audit Scotland’s business car mileage by ten per cent (between 2009 and 2014). 
2012/13 performance:
	   Our business travel by car decreased by 44,341 miles (10.5 per cent) during 2012/13.
	   In 2012/13 our business car mileage was 140,000 miles less than when we established our carbon management plan in 2008/09 (a reduction of 27 per cent).
    Our associated CO2 emissions from business mileage decreased from 91.5 tonnes to 89.7 tonnes. Since establishing our carbon management plan we have almost halved our CO2 emissions from car travel.
Exhibit 2
Car business mileage during 2012/13
	Number  of people  (WTE)	Business mileage	% of total business mileage	Annual change	% change	Average mileage per person 	
Accounts Commission / Audit Scotland Governance	
Accounts Commission, Board & AGS	18.0	6,822	2%	+789	13.1%	379	
Business Groups	
ASG	138.7	328,073	86%	-41,975	-11.3%	2,365	
Audit Strategy	11.6	15,766	4%	+7,022	+80.3%	1,359	
PAG	40.6	7,321	2%	+80	+1.1%	180	
BVSI	25.4	17,519	5%	-7,851	-30.9%	690	
CSG	40.6	3,874	1%	-2,406	-38.3%	95	
Total	274.9	379,375	100%	-44,341	-10.5%	1,392	
Source: Audit Scotland
13.	Since 2010, we have had information on the specific emission levels of Audit Scotland lease cars and have been able to use this to more accurately calculate car business mileage emissions. During 2012/13 we have improved our information on business travel further by being able to calculate average CO2 emissions for petrol and diesel cars separately. Based on this information, our estimated emission levels in 2012/13 decreased from 91.5 to 89.7 tonnes CO2 (a decrease of around two per cent). This is a relatively small level of decrease taking account of the decrease in business miles and greener fleet. 
14.	Our carbon management plan estimated that our car business travel in 2008/09 produced approximately 172 tonnes of CO2.  In 2012/13 our estimated CO2 emissions of 89.7 tonnes represents a decrease in emissions of around 48 per cent.  We estimate that by the end of carbon management plan in 2014 our business travel emissions will have halved over the five year period.

Carbon management plan: project 4
Project lead: Diane McGiffen
Target: 	
•	Place a 140 gCO2/km cap on lease cars.
2012/13 performance
	  A 140 gCO2/km cap on lease cars was implemented for all new leased cars from 1 January 2013
The average emissions for Audit Scotland’s leased car fleet decreased from 135gCO2/km to 131.5gCO2/km compared with 2011/12.
15.	One of our carbon management objectives was to impose a cap of 140gCO2/km on any new car leased by Audit Scotland. In 2008/09, 70 per cent of business miles were travelled in leased cars, 65 per cent of which had emissions of over 140gCO2/km. Placing an upper limit on emissions of 140gCO2/km was identified as having the potential to save 6.9 tonnes of CO2 per year (assuming no change in business mileage). 
16.	The proportion of the leased car fleet exceeding 140gCO2/km fell from 36 per cent in 2011/12 to 28 per cent in 2012/13.  Only 27 of Audit Scotland's current 96 lease cars currently exceed the 140gCO2/km emissions cap. This proportion will continue to fall as existing car leases expire and the new policy is implemented.
17.	Imposing the emissions cap is a positive step forward and achieves a goal of our carbon management plan.  However, prior to introducing our emissions cap, our fleet had been getting greener as employees try and minimise their fuel costs and tax liabilities.  It is our view that we should continue to keep the emissions cap under review to reflect broader context changes, such as the EU now working towards a limit of 95gCO2/km for new cars by 2020.

Waste
Carbon management plan: project 5
Project lead: Carbon Scrutiny Group
Objective: 
•	Reduce the amount of waste we produce.
2012/13 performance:
We recycled over 11 tonnes of waste from our Edinburgh offices.  As a result of our recycling, we diverted around 17 tonnes of CO2.
18.	Our commercial waste is not weighed and recorded as part of our commercial waste collection service. For this reason we have no reliable information on the total amount of waste we produce.  However, we receive useful waste recycling data from our recycling contractor in Edinburgh. This shows that for our Edinburgh offices we recycled around 11.1 tonnes of waste in 2012/13.  As a result of our recycling in Edinburgh, we diverted almost 17 tonnes of CO2.  The amount of waste we recycled in the last year and the associated CO2 emissions we diverted remained relatively unchanged from 2011/12.  
19.	Our recycling figures provide a conservative estimate of our overall impact, as they do not take into account our offices outside of Edinburgh. On the assumption that Audit Scotland staff will recycle about the same amount of waste, it is estimated that our total recycling may potentially be around 16.6 tonnes and that as an organisation we have potentially diverted more than 25 tonnes of CO2 during 2011/12.
20.	Around 77.5 per cent of our recycled waste was from paper (confidential and non-confidential).  This is a significant reduction from last year, when 89 per cent of our recycled waste was from paper.  This indicates a positive shift, with us recycling a much greater proportion of our other waste i.e. cardboard, drinks cartons, drinks cans, etc. During the year, the CSB helped improve signage in our offices (particularly 18 GS) about what can and cannot be recycled and recycling facilities to try and get a more consistent approach to recycling within our offices. The increased proportion of our recycled waste coming from sources other than paper suggests that our initiatives are having an impact.
21.	At present it is not possible to say whether we have recycled more because we have produced more waste or whether our waste has stayed the same or decreased and that we are recycling a greater proportion of it.  We strive to both minimise our waste and maximise the proportion we recycle and will continue efforts to more clearly demonstrate our impact by improving our data on the waste we produce.

Carbon impact assessments for policies 
Carbon management plan: project 6
Project lead: Diane McGiffen
22.	The aim of this project is to ensure that new and existing policies include a carbon impact assessment to determine the impact of the policy on our carbon emissions. An initial review has identified the following policies which are likely to have an impact on carbon emissions and should be subject to a review: 
•	travel policy 
•	home-working policy 
•	international policy 
•	office opening hours. 
23.	As highlighted in the previous chapter, we will be consulting with HR on its annual review of HR policies to ensure that they take account of the impact on our carbon footprint in an appropriate and proportionate way. 

Data monitoring and reporting
Carbon management plan: project 7
Project lead: Carbon Scrutiny Group
24.	We recognise the need for better monitoring data about the cost of energy and travel and a consistent methodology to help us to calculate our emissions. We recognise the limitations which we are currently working within, particularly around the energy and water use of our offices, and that estimated or proxy information often has to be used. However, the introduction of our new, electronic expenses claim system is providing a significant improvement in data capture and monitoring relating to business travel.  

Carbon Scrutiny Board future actions
25.	Audit Scotland, like all public bodies, has climate change duties through the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009. Ensuring that we are able to perform those duties to best effect and report on our performance will continue to be a key task for the CSB in 2013/14. 
26.	The principal focus of the CSB during the coming year will be to evaluate Audit Scotland's performance over the life of its existing carbon management plan and to develop a new and ambitious plan from 2014.  In developing our new plan, we will take into account the progress we have made and our organisational learning over the lifetime of our existing plan.  This will help ensure that our future plan is not only proportionate to the nature of our business but allows to us to demonstrate our future environmental performance in the most transparent and accountable way.
27.	Other future actions include:
•	Developing a straightforward impact assessment methodology for new and existing policies.  We see this as an integral part of developing our new carbon management plan from 2014.
•	Monitoring the environmental impact of our office rationalisation programme, including our office move from East Kilbride to Glasgow.
•	Continuing to look at opportunities for improving carbon-related data capture and monitoring, particularly in relation to improving the availability of energy data linked to future office moves and improving data on the total amount of waste we produce.