Carbon literacy

Carbon literacy is vital climate change learning that catalyses action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Today more than 37,000 individuals and 3,500 organisations are carbon literate in countries all over the world.

We received our carbon literate organisation (CLO) silver award in July 2022, after receiving our bronze award at the Greater Manchester Green Summit in March 2019. The awards recognise our increased commitment to acting on climate change, supporting colleagues to take action and sharing knowledge and best practice around carbon literacy with the sector and region.

To build on the success of achieving this accreditation and to drive further cultural change across our business, we have rolled out carbon literacy training to our leadership team. This will encourage them to reduce their own carbon emissions and those they are responsible for in the workplace. We also took part in the first-ever carbon literacy action day that coincided with COP26, the United Nations climate change conference, where we delivered training to some of our network partners.

From March 2023 we will deliver training to a further 35% (750) of our colleagues on our journey to achieve gold accreditation, using a hybrid approach of face-to-face and online learning. We'll deliver training to our network contract partners and agencies who are helping our vulnerable customers on their journeys to net zero carbon. We intend to develop a toolkit to support other organisations on their carbon literacy journey and have already delivered training to our sister company Electricity North West Construction and Maintenance which is now a bronze carbon literate organisation (CLO).

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