Low Carbon

The world is facing a climate crisis. Governments, business and consumers across the world are making commitments and changing their behaviour to help tackle this challenge and limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C.

The scale of the challenge means there is even more focus on the impact of buildings on the environment. We find many of our customers are equally committed to minimising their carbon footprints and reducing overall energy costs. It is therefore important that landlords and developers own and create buildings that are sustainable and use natural resources efficiently.

Our approach to carbon management is dictated by our carbon footprint – i.e. we focus on our two main sources of emissions, making up 88 per cent of our carbon footprint:

• Our corporate and customer emissions: SEGRO’s scope 1 and 2 emissions (gas, electricity, transport fuel etc.) plus the gas and electricity use of our customers in our spaces.
• The embodied carbon from our developments: the carbon emitted in the production and transport of our building materials and transport, as well as the construction process.

• We have ambitious science-based targets for reducing our embodied and operational carbon emissions and are in the process of reviewing our net-zero targets.
• We factor a building’s sustainability into our investment decisions, not only for potential acquisitions but also for deciding whether to dispose of or refurbish assets. We have also assessed our portfolio under different climate scenarios and identified adaptations that need to be made.
• We will continue to adapt our investment process when deciding on allocating new capital to acquiring assets and new developments, to ensure that we take into account the newest information available to us.
• Our urban portfolio is located on the edge of major European cities which makes reaching the city centre possible via electric vehicles. Our newer inner-city assets facilitate delivery by means such as cargo bicycles. A number of our urban estates are located close to canals and waterways which customers are starting to use in innovative ways as part of their distribution networks. Two of the UK big box parks that we have developed in the Midlands have strategic rail freight interchange terminals which allow our customers to transport goods by rail rather than more carbon-intensive HGVs.
• All employees’ variable remuneration is linked to SEGRO’s performance on metrics linked to corporate and customer emissions, embodied carbon emissions and visibility of customers’ energy consumption data.