Skanska tops list of green construction companies

Skanska have topped a list of UK building contractors with the lowest carbon emissions in the first ever league table of companies’ carbon emissions by the government.

The Carbon Reduction Commitment league table published by the Environment Agency placed Carillion and BAM as the second and third placed contractors respectively.

The league table measured how far companies have taken early action to measure their carbon emissions such as signing-up to an accredited measurement scheme and installing automatically reading meters. It then assigned companies a score out of 100, with the top firms scoring 100 points.

The league table did not rank firms by the amount of carbon produced by firms but did take a baseline measurement which will see improvements measured and ranked in next year’s league table.

Helen Jones, head of sustainability at Carillion, which scored 73, said the result was encouraging. “Importantly the actions we take from now on to maintain this good start in meeting the CRC EES obligations will contribute significantly to our sustainability goals, in particular our targets of reducing our fuel use by 50% and CO2 emissions from utility use by 20% by 2015,” she said. 

Skanska, scored 87.5 but ranked even higher was building materials company Lafarge with a score of 98.

Engineer WS Atkins, which scored 71, attributed its success to a worldwide programme of energy awareness raising among staff, which has evolved to also reduce the carbon emissions of its buildings.

Richard Hulland, Atkins’ director of quality, safety and environment, said: “We are the highest ranked engineering and design consultancy in the CRC tables and clearly that is evidence that our plan to reduce our carbon emissions is working.”

Land Securities were the highest ranked property firm with a score of 70 but environmental director David Farbrother said: “I’m not surprised. Our first energy management strategy was in 1981.”