climate change projects

The Co-operative is combating climate change to make life good for everyone

The Co-operative is among the world’s leading businesses when it comes to taking up the challenge of tackling global climate change. Our approach to the issue is five-fold, focusing on energy efficiency, renewable energy consumption and generation, carbon offsetting, the provision of finance and public policy lobbying.

We have over 4,000 outlets powered by renewable energy, and have significantly cut the energy consumption in our buildings in recent years. An £18 million efficiency programme has been initiated to reduce electricity and gas consumption even further by 2012, by which time we also plan to be generating 15% of our energy from our own renewable sources. Our approach to climate change includes the following projects:

The Solar Tower

The Co-operative Insurance Solar Tower in Manchester is clad in over 7,000 solar panels, making it the UK’s largest solar power installation. We may not always get the best weather in Manchester, but the tower can still generate enough electricity every year to make 9 million cups of tea, potentially saving 78 tonnes of CO2 emissions.

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Wind farms

Coldham wind farm on The Co-operative Farms land in Cambridgeshire is a joint venture with Scottish Power. Eight turbines are now generating enough electricity to meet the equivalent needs of over 9,000 UK homes. Plans are currently in place to extend the Coldham wind farm, and to develop a 14-turbine windfarm on Group land in Goole, Humberside. The Merchant Wind project was established in September 2004, through a £4 million, eight-year contract between The Co-operative and green electricity generator, Ecotricity.

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Community projects

We invested £10.4 million in the community in 2007 alone. Many of the community projects we support have environmental benefits, such as our Green Energy for Schools scheme, which has already provided renewable energy solutions in the form of solar panels to more than 100 UK schools.

Another of our community projects helps schools set up Walking Buses where groups of children walk to school together accompanied by an adult, allowing families to cut down on car journeys.