Fuel efficiency

To ensure that we can keep the country connected, we have to be able to reach all of the 120million km of cable which is spread throughout Great Britain to both maintain and improve it.

Openreach has approximately 20,000 engineering vehicles. These account for around 11% of BT Group’s total carbon footprint, which we’re aiming to reduce every year.

We’ve introduced new initiatives, changed our buying habits and encouraged everyone we work with, both inside and outside Openreach, to help to tackle climate change.

Carbon efficiency is now a key factor in every new vehicle purchase that we make. We actively explore and continually re-assess the different types of vehicles available and pay particular attention to fuel efficiency to ensure that the decisions we make are the best options for both the environment and for our drivers.  We are currently trialling electric vehicles, which can be driven for 100 miles without being re-charged and produce no harmful tailpipe emissions. We have also invested in specialist vehicle equipment and racking, to ensure that it is lightweight, efficient and sustainable.

We ensure that work is assigned with the aim of helping us to minimise wasted journeys in our fleet. This is achieved through assessing customer demand in line with our service priorities to assign the most relevant resources effectively, as well as through the introduction of GPS location systems, making it possible to pinpoint the nearest engineer at any particular time.

We’ve also implemented Network Health Initiatives, to regularly assess and improve the network, which has led to a reduction in engineering visits and costs, and an improvement in customer experience. This has resulted into a year on year reduction in truck rolls, saving 116,000 in 2008/2009, 41,500 in 2009/2010, and a further 8,500 in 2010/2011.

Training in fuel-efficient driving, vehicle management and technological innovation have also reduced fuel usage and CO2 emissions.

The combination of these measures has led to a 15% reduction in our fleet fuel emissions between 2007 and 2011.

If you would like to know more about our sustainability work, please contact our sustainability team.

360o Fleet Innovation = Reduced Footprint