An exciting milestone reached in our journey to Destination Green

Today we announced plans to power almost all our UK bus and rail sites with 100% renewable electricity after entering a three-year electricity supply contract with SSE Business Energy in the UK.

It’s an announcement I’m personally very excited about as it makes us the first major private transport operator in the UK to switch to a 100% renewable electricity supply, and marks a huge milestone on our journey towards ‘Destination Green’ – our Europe-wide sustainability programme aimed at reducing our environmental impacts.

The new contract will go a long way to making us a more energy efficient business. It will allow Arriva to report zero carbon emission electricity, preventing an estimated 27,000 tonnes of CO2e from entering the atmosphere each year. That’s the equivalent to powering almost 25,000 homes with green electricity, or taking almost 95 million miles driven by an average car off the road.

All our UK sites with large property portfolios - and therefore high energy consumption - are part of this new contract, including UK Bus, Arriva Rail London, Arriva Rail North, ATW, Chiltern Railways, Grand Central, Arriva plc and Arriva Transport Solutions.  

SSE Business Energy will supply the sites with electricity from 100% renewable sources, supported by Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin certificates. This means that energy consumption used at the sites is matched to an equivalent volume generated by wind and hydro assets, and then exported to the National Grid.

As part of the contract, our UK rail and bus sites will also have access to SSE’s online energy monitoring portal, Clarity, allowing them to monitor their energy consumption and implement more effective ways to save energy.

We’re already taking a proactive approach to reducing the environmental impact of our vehicle fleets by operating a range of low emission vehicles in the UK - including hybrid, gas and fully electric buses - and this new contract allows us to take this one step further, helping us to achieve our sustainability goals relating to our wider business.

Businesses are under increased pressure to become more environmentally friendly to help the UK meet its sustainability targets. We want to play a key role in this and do what we can to help decarbonise the transport sector. The signing of this contract with SSE shows that we are already on this path, and we hope it will lead to other transport organisations following suit and investing in renewable energy.