Costain joins the COP26 Race to Zero and signs The Climate Pledge
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Costain’s Climate Change Action Plan launched in 2020, also outlines how the Group will play a leading role in the development and delivery of innovative, technology-based solutions to deliver smarter, sustainable energy and transport infrastructure for a low carbon future, helping to reduce carbon footprints across every sector.
The Climate Pledge is a commitment co-founded by Amazon and Global Optimism to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040 or sooner, accelerating and driving tangible action on climate change. Signatories of the Pledge commit to three principal areas of action:
- Regular reporting
Measure and report greenhouse gas emissions on a regular basis. - Carbon elimination
Implement decarbonisation strategies in line with the Paris Agreement through real business change and innovation, including efficiency improvements, renewable energy, materials reductions, and other carbon emission elimination strategies. - Credible offsets
Take actions to neutralise any remaining emissions with additional, quantifiable, real, permanent, and socially beneficial offsets to achieve net zero annual carbon emissions by 2040.
Costain’s actions, results and data are frequently audited and reviewed to bring forward any target dates where possible. The data is used to further inform and develop corporate strategies and governance going forward. Costain’s Climate Change Action Plan has been formulated without the need to offset any emissions, however, if required, Costain would use offsets that meet The Climate Pledge criteria.
To tackle scope 3 emissions, Costain’s plan explicitly targets materials such as concrete, steel and aggregates which makes up approximately 69% of Costain’s footprint.
“Costain has always embraced and been an early adopter of low carbon materials and low carbon design, but we are now taking it to a more industrial scale.”
Lara Young, Costain's climate change director