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Environmental Policy

Since our founding, environmental policy has been at the heart of what we do at Agile City. According to the IEMA, “including construction, the built environment contributes approximately 39% of global greenhouse gas emissions,” and, “decarbonisation of buildings and construction must include embodied and operational carbon.” Agile City’s goal to reactivate historically derelict or forgotten spaces within Glasgow and spread the knowledge of how to retrofit the built environment are important contributions to reducing the impact of the city on the world’s rising temperatures and ensuring it befits its title as the Dear Green Place.

With these goals in mind, it is important that every business takes steps so we can collectively reduce the impacts of climate change.

Our Commitments

Here at Agile City, we commit to doing our part to achieve Net Zero by 2045. This means we will publish yearly updates on Agile City’s Carbon Footprint, and we will continue to compare our use of carbon to our baseline line of 2022. We will continue working to cover at least 95% of our total Scope 1 and 2 emissions and at least 67% of total Scope 3 emissions. Our carbon footprint for 2022-2023 is estimated at 118.1 tonnes CO2e. Around 90% of our carbon emissions at Agile City come from Scope 3 emissions. Meanwhile, our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions are fairly consistent from 2020 to 2024. This transparency is a key part of taking accountability for the effect running a company takes on the environment.

In addition, we commit to short- and mid-term goals to decarbonise our activities across the company. We will continue to update on these goals with our yearly update, the first of which can be found on our Blog. To find out more about our plans for waste management check out the post here. To find out more about our plans for our small-scale power stations, check out this post.

Definitions

Scope 1 emissions are the emissions we have direct control over. These include fuels that are burned on-site, for heating for example, and as a direct result of the company’s actions, ie. company vehicles. Agile City does not own any company vehicles, and the gas heating is recorded on a regular basis.

Scope 2 emissions, comparatively, are somewhat under our control. Scope 2 includes the electricity consumed by the business. Electricity is also measured and recorded onsite regularly.

Scope 3 emissions include the effects of actions both upstream and downstream of the business. This includes the carbon produced by employees traveling to work, the carbon produced by business wastewater that must later be processed, the fuel burnt in transporting goods to the business, and the greenhouse gases produced by those goods discarded by the business and its end users, to name a few sources. Our method for calculating Scope 3 focuses on business waste, the water consumed, and spend-based estimates of material emissions based on the Normative Business Carbon Calculator.

Timeline

2018 – 2020

  • Passivhaus retrofit feasibility study – Civic House
  • Roof insulation and air-tightness – Civic House
  • Installation of air-source heat pump – Civic House
  • Internal electrical improvement – LED lighting, heating controls – Civic House

2019 – 2021

  • PV / solar installation – 50KW system – Civic House
  • External Wall Insulation and air-tightness – Civic House
  • Triple glazed windows and insulated doors throughout – Civic House
  • Ventilation & Mechanical Heat Recovery System – Civic House

2021 – 2023

  • Roof insulation and overclad – Glue Factory
  • 30kw PV system – Glue Factory
  • Air-source Heat Pumps & industrial power supplies – Glue Factory

2023-2025

  • Power and heat storage in both buildings
  • EV charging points across both buildings
  • Internal energy monitoring across both buildings – creating public ‘micro-power station’ digital interface
  • Civic Yard development alongside food waste strategy

2030

  • Decrease of our annual carbon emissions to 59.05 tCO2e by reducing use of virgin building materials

2045 

  • Decrease our annual carbon emissions to 11.81 tCO2e (10% of the baselines emissions from financial year 2022-2023)