Print    Email

Email To		[Close]
		You must make entries in all fields
Your Email
Your Name
Send to Email
		Send

Following a 21 per cent decrease in carbon emissions over one year, News International Ltd avowed to turn carbon neutral. It would, henceforth, be UK’s first newspaper company to take this significant step forward in reducing its impact on climatic changes.

This energy reduction programme is a key feature of parent company News Corporation’s Global Energy Initiative, designed to curb environmental degradation. The initiative aims on renovating its operations’ use of energy by involving millions of employees, readers, viewers, business partners and web users in environmental issues. News Corporation has capitalized in renewable energy projects that reduced carbon quantities equivalent to News International’s unavoidable emissions, in order to achieve absolute carbon neutrality. The carbon equipoise comes from wind energy projects in India.

These carbon reductions were corroborated by an independent expert third party and the ventures were certified under the Voluntary Carbon Standard developed by the Climate Group, International Emissions Trading Association, and World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

Chairman and CEO of News Corporation in Europe and Asia, James Murdoch, reportedly pronounced this as a major milestone for News International. This, he said, was only the beginning of a wide range of new initiatives that include implementation of best energy practices which, he said, was the key to any company’s environmental programme. He also emphasised on reaching out to a wider audience both in the UK and worldwide. For he felt, it was imperative that readers, advertisers, business partners and staff know about the progress made by their company.

Throughout the past 18 months, News International has evolved an elaborate energy programme that involves checking its own greenhouse gas emissions annually, pursuing operational efficiencies and renewable sources of power and engaging audiences, employees and business partners in the sustainable usage of energy sources.

In fact, February 2007 saw News International changing over to green energy for its electricity supply. 70% of this ‘green energy’ is derived from renewable sources and 30% from Combined Heat and Power. This, along with other energy reduction measures, like better facilities management systems and energy-efficient information technology improvements has resulted in a noteworthy impact on News International’s carbon emissions. Its carbon footprint has reduced by 21% year on year from 58,977 metric tons of CO2 in 2006 to 46,567 metric tons of CO2 equivalents in 2007.

News International’s carbon footprint was measured by ICF International for fiscal 2006 and by Clear Carbon Consulting for fiscal 2007. The analysis was verified by independent expert third-party Environmental Resources Trust for fiscal 2006.