Scottish Environment Protection Agency

SEPA has a significant contribution to make to the realisation of Scotland’s Climate Change Delivery Plan. Working to limit the extent of and damage resulting from climate change is an important part of SEPA’s business and is embedded into many aspects of the organization:

• Limiting and adapting to climate change is one of the key environmental outcomes of our Corporate Plan 2008 – 2011.
• Our Annual Operating Plan for 2010/11 includes climate change as a key programme of and will soon be published online.

We seek to help Scotland limit and adapt to climate change through our regulation, environmental monitoring, policy development and through the advice we provide to businesses. How you can contact us.

• We are also committed to reducing SEPA’s own environmental impact, including greenhouse gases.

Greening SEPA:

SEPA’s internal environment policy is implemented through Greening SEPA, a programme of work overseen by a steering group on which all parts of SEPA are represented. Greening SEPA hinges on our environmental management system, which since 2005 has been certified to the internationally recognized standard ISO14001.

ISO14001 requires us to:

• establish an environmental policy;
• consider environmental aspects and impacts of our products, activities and services;
• plan environmental objectives and measurable targets;
• implement and operate programmes to meet those objectives.
  

We have six main targets. Here is how each of those contributes to limiting and adapting to climate change:

1. We will reduce CO₂ emissions arising from SEPA’s business activities by 25% below the 2006–2007 baseline by March 2012. This target requires SEPA to reduce its direct CO₂ emissions, i.e. those resulting from electricity, gas and transport fuel use. Our transport target (below) will also contribute to this.
2. We will reduce CO₂ from all business transport modes by 10% of the 2006–2007 baseline by March 2011. This target relates specifically to reducing emissions from travel by road, air, rail and sea. We are currently on track to achieve this target one year early and will strive to maintain this reduction. As part of our work towards this target, we have reduced the number of UK mainland flights we take by 50%.
3. We will target and reduce all of SEPA’s internal waste streams by applying the waste hierarchy of prevention, reduction, reuse and recycling before disposal. The disposal of waste to landfill or incineration also contributes to climate change. The landfill of biodegradable wastes in particular contributes to global warming as its breakdown in the anaerobic conditions of a landfill site lead to the emission of methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than CO₂.
4. We will also reduce current water consumption per full-time equivalent (FTE) employee below recognised benchmarks by 2011. The supply of clean water and the treatment of waste water use energy and can be very energy intensive. This contributes to climate change, and reducing the amount of water we use and waste helps to reduce our impact.
5. We will examine ways to reduce the impact of the goods and services SEPA procures, with specific targets for major goods and a commitment to work with the Scottish Government to influence Scottish public sector procurement. All the goods and services that we procure have been produced and transported using energy and materials. This has an impact on the climate, and we are actively working to reduce this impact, including by implementing the Scottish Government’s procurement action plan within SEPA. SEPA’s new Aberdeen office and laboratory, shared with Scottish Natural Heritage and the Joint Nature Conservation Council, achieved a Building Research Method Environmental Assessment Method ‘Excellent’ rating and has an energy performance certificate rating of ‘A’.
6. By March 2011 all SEPA offices with grounds will implement the biodiversity action plans already in place. Ensuring that we use our grounds and work with local communities or businesses to help them do the same helps to provide a habitat for species, some of which are threatened by a warming climate. Some of our biodiversity work, such as tree planting also directly helps to reduce global warming.

We have already met or are on target to meet 5 of these 6 targets. Find out more about how we are doing.

Some of the actions that we take in order to meet these targets, such as greener procurement, are carried out at a corporate level but all our staff have a role to play in Greening SEPA.

We all help to meet these targets through green business planning, which means that all our functional teams (directorates, departments and units) include planned contributions towards achieving the targets as part of the normal business planning process.

In addition, a manager at each of our occupied buildings across Scotland is tasked with overseeing a Greener Building Plan. These managers are supported by a network of Green Coordinators, who help to implement the Green Building Plans. Green Building Plans focus on actions that must be carried out locally, such as habitat enhancement, waste minimisation and recycling and limited building energy audits.

Find out more about Greening SEPA.