Becoming a net zero carbon company

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Our approach to decarbonisation
Becoming a net zero carbon company

Becoming a net zero carbon company

Our journey to becoming a net zero business

Innovating our way to net zero

Our production sites, activities and other facilities are in the process of being decarbonised. To meet our net zero commitment, further innovation will be needed. We must continue to think radically about how we operate and drive forward research and development to provide clean, safe and competitive solutions.

Our progress so far

We are doing everything we can to reduce the environmental impacts of our operations and have already made good progress.

In 2015 we set ourselves a series of operational targets. These have helped us to cut our greenhouse gas emissions by 187,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent since 2014. Here are some of our other achievements since then.

£184m

Invested in sustainable, energy efficient new facilities

40%

Reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (scope 1 & 2)

29%

Reduction in energy consumption per £1m revenue

71%

Reduction in waste sent to landfill

Reducing emissions

We’re committed to working towards emissions reductions across the applications within our direct control and those which aren’t. Our near-term goal is to cut the carbon emissions of our operations and activities to net zero by 2030, excluding product testing and development.

To do this, we have to look at our own facilities, the materials we build with and the operations of our customers and the wider sectors we work within.

We aim to ensure our products are compatible with net zero use and will continue to advocate for the public and policy support needed to achieve this.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT OUR EMISSIONS FOOTPRINT

Reducing our energy use
Energy efficiency is vital to achieving our net zero 2030 goal. That’s why we have invested over £30m in energy efficiency improvement projects since 2014.

These include upgrading lighting, updating heating and installing networked building management systems. We expect to spend about the same again over the next five years to help us hit our target of net zero.

On-site deployment of renewables and low-carbon technology

We have cut absolute CO2 emissions by 50% since 2014 by introducing renewable and low-carbon technologies at our sites.

One of the ways we have done this is by installing solar panels as part of a global initiative called Project Sunshine at our facilities in Singapore, the UK, Europe and North America.

Our ground source heat pump and solar thermal hybrid technology project enable us to collect, store and provide heat at our site in Bristol, UK, throughout the year.

We plan to increase the proportion of our global energy requirements with on-site renewables or low-carbon technologies from its current 25%.


Mamta Bhasin, Global Category Manager – Supplier Sourcing & Strategy, Asia Pacific, Rolls-Royce

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“Solar is an important and inexhaustible source of energy. Being able to harness natural energy and use it to power our operations will enable us to reduce the environmental impact of our operations and gain greater pricing certainty for the future.”

Buying in renewable energy
Where we are unable to produce our own renewable or low-carbon energy, we seek to buy 100% renewable energy from elsewhere.

In 2019, we switched our facilities in the UK and Germany to electricity contracts backed by the Renewable Energy Guarantee of Origin (REGO) scheme. This reduced our emissions under greenhouse gas reporting frameworks by 21%.

Over the next three years, we are looking to buy in more renewable electricity and natural gas as supplies increase.

Closed-loop manufacturing
Components made of exotic materials are critical to the safety and efficiency of our products and each year, we use over 20,000 tonnes of high-value metal alloys.

We’re working to reuse as much metal as we can through our closed-loop recycling programme, saving approximately 300,000 megawatt hours of energy and 80,000 tonnes of CO2 per year.

Moving forward, we’re also designing more re-usable materials into our products and building new supply chains for these where needed.

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Reducing our emissions using our own products
Deploying our own innovative energy solutions at our own sites.

At our manufacturing facility in Friedrichshafen, Germany, we have installed a microgrid where gas engines are combined with battery and solar photovoltaic panels to provide 30% of the site’s energy demand.

Microgrid solutions can provide the intelligent use of energy from renewable sources for our customers as well. In the UK, the MOD accounts for 50% of Government-generated carbon emissions and the figure is even higher in the US. As the MOD modernises its estate, the application of a microgrid could not only provide a significant first step for a military base seeking to reduce its emissions, but also drive a much more efficient and cost-effective use of energy.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT MICROGRIDS

Stefanie Cray, Business Development Manager Microgrids, Friedrichshafen, Rolls-Royce

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“Our microgrid helps us to reduce our energy costs and carbon emissions on-site, while allowing us to demonstrate system and component behaviour in real time.”

Rigorous and safe testing is our most important challenge
Product safety testing is a critical part of engine development

We will seek to mitigate the emissions associated with product testing by increasing the use of lower-carbon alternative fuels as availability rises and using digital modelling and other technologies to replace some physical testing where appropriate in our product testing regime.

We recognise the need to ensure these activities are aligned with our decarbonisation goals and are committed to working with customers, regulators and industry partners to explore ways to meet our product testing demands without generating carbon emissions.

As an interim measure we are committed to carrying out 10% of our civil aerospace testing activities with SAF by 2023 and have tied executive remuneration to this goal.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT TESTING

Beyond 2030

The next frontier of our net zero operations challenge will be moving from net zero power to net zero heat.

We will mainly target heat use in our buildings and manufacturing processes. This presents another opportunity to harness our own innovations.

Rolls-Royce develops and delivers complex power and propulsion solutions for safety-critical applications in the air, at sea and on land.







© Rolls-Royce plc . All rights reserved.

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