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Total CO2e emitted in 2024
633.88 tonnes

Everflow is a fast-growing, increasingly efficient business. We increased our revenue by 16% (£26 million) in 2024 and increased our profitability by 544% (£4.2m EBITDA-R), while increasing our FTE employees by 11% (19 FTEs) our office space by 50%, and customers by16% (from 94,431 to 110,411).
While our absolute carbon emissions decreased 45%, our revenue increased 21%. As a growing business, the best way to understand whether our carbon reduction efforts are working is by monitoring intensity metrics, as below.
For example,
  • Needed to change email on my account , emailed everflow customer services & within 10 minutes had a reply back from Jill and it was all sorted so I could set up my online account !! No issues
  • We will:
  • We reduced our Scope 1 and 2 emissions per m2 of office space by 8%
  • We halved our total Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions per £million in sales revenue by 53% and per £million profit by 92%
  • Our emissions per employee increased by 24%
This year, we deliberately opened more office space and grew our customer base with only a small increase in FTE, to accommodate anticipated future growth and increase efficiency.

GHG emissions Reporting

Emissions per Tonnes CO2e 2022 Tonnes CO2e 2023 Tonnes CO2e 2024 Change
FTE employee* 0.26 0.38 0.47 +24%
m² office space occupied (902/1,030/1,542)* 0.044 0.064 0.059 -8%
£m sales revenue 12.89 7.195 3.35 -53%
£m EBITDA 4,219 1,482 124 -92%

*Excludes Scope 3 emissions

We are committed to the Climate Pledge to reduce our absolute emissions by at least 90% before 2040, and offset our remaining emissions (Net Zero) – all while growing our business.

This is our fourth year of reporting GHG emissions figures, but our base year was redefined to 2022, so we will compare against this year only, as well as against our target trajectory towards Net Zero by 2040.

We already offset all our emissions because we understand the need to do this while we are reducing them. The Oxford Principles for Net Zero Aligned Carbon Offsetting include engaging suppliers now to build capacity for offsetting in time for Net Zero.

We have not included emissions from purchased wholesale water or wastewater services on behalf of our customers in our Scope 3 emissions (which were 17,755 tonnes for 2024) because we know these to be on a Net Zero journey of their own, which we don’t have a strong influence over. We offer services to help our customers reduce their water consumption too. We have included all other professional services purchased. These have increased significantly rom 9,731 tonnes in 2021, due to our continued growth in customers (currently more than 110,000 vs 94,431 in 2023)

However, all our emissions (including those from water wholesalers omitted) have been offset from 2021-24 through the purchase of carbon credits. The UK government reported that water supply emissions reduced 13% in 2024 and wastewater emissions by 8%. In addition, many emissions factors for UK waste disposal reduced by 70% in 2024.

 

 

HQ moved from Wynyard to Peterlee in April 2023 but lease retained for old HQ until end of 2024. We have changed the 2022 figure from last year’s report to reflect how much of the year we occupied each area, as we’ve done for 2022 and 2024.
MOSL 2024 report, volumetric usage based
Major changes to the Conversion Factors 2024

Emissions by scope

Scope 1

Direct emissions from sources owned or controlled by Everflow:

  • Stationary combustion equipment, e.g., boilers, used for building heating
  • Refrigerants used for cooling buildings.

Scope 2

Indirect emissions from purchased sources of energy that the company does not control, e.g., electricity.

Scope 3

All other indirect emissions from Everflow’s activities but from sources controlled by external organisations, e.g., mobile combustion from travel, outsourced services and purchased products, employee home working.

Progress against Net Zero Science Based Targets

Scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions targets

Our Scope 1 and 2 emissions are triple our 2024 target (91 tonnes vs 35 target). However, no longer having any leases at Wynyard from 2025 will help reduce Scope 1 and we are improving heating controls at Peterlee to reduce Scope 2.

Moving to a zero-emission electricity supplier at this site (in plan for October 2026) will further reduce Scope 2. While we would prefer to generate and export energy to the grid from renewable sources like solar and wind to reduce our Scope 2 emissions further, our landlord is not currently willing to install these systems.

Scope 3 carbon emissions targets

Our scope 3 emissions targets require the steepest reduction in absolute terms.

Our Scope 3 emissions have also reduced 757 tonnes further than their target (543 tonnes vs 1,300 target).
Our total emissions are therefore better than their target by 701 tonnes (634 tonnes vs 1,335 target)

Workspace emissions

We are also pleased to report zero fugitive emissions of refrigerants from our landlords this year.
This has resulted in our Scope 1 emissions reducing by 56% in 2024 – despite retaining the lease on a previous building and our office space increasing by 25% (400m2).
Top ups of refrigerant in our offices which used air conditioning were responsible for 91% of our Scope 1 emissions in 2022. Happily, following pressure from us on our landlords and a move to a new HQ, none were required in 2023 or 2024.

As our new HQ is entirely heated and cooled by electricity and we retained our old HQ lease in 2024, our Scope 2 emissions increased 65%.

Scope 3 emissions

Scope 3 emissions by activity (tCO2e)

Our largest contributor to our carbon footprint, as for many businesses, is associated with our supply chain.
We outsource a substantial amount of our operations. Therefore, influencing our supply chain is very important because more than half of our Scope 3 emissions are from purchased goods and services. We are benchmarking our waste suppliers against various quality criteria, including sustainability. As we grow our Waste operations, we are looking to work with the more sustainable suppliers. However, how we travel (commuting and for business) also has a large impact and is more within our control.

Further analysis

Purchased goods and services

Emissions from this category reduced by two thirds from 1,066 to 305 tonnes in 2024. Most of our Scope 3 emissions were categorised as “Other professional services”.
We categorised all those we had more oversight of below.

Waste

In 2024 we expanded our commercial waste collections department and collected 5,340 tonnes of waste, generating 39 tonnes CO2e of emissions. In 2023, we used the spend based method to calculate waste emissions, which is based on national averages of types of waste collected from households and businesses and how these streams are processed.
But in 2024, we began monitoring how much of the waste we collect is recycled or composted/digested (food and garden type waste). We also set ambitious targets for 2025-30 to drive waste processing emissions down and provide more recycled content to manufacturers so they don’t need to mine as many virgin materials.
Collection type 2023% volume collected 2024% weight collected
Dry Mixed Recycling 23% 11%
Glass recycling 0% 16%
Food Waste 2% 9%
Construction, demolition & excavation (just launched) 0% 0%
Residual (general) waste 76% 62%
Fate 2023% 2024% 2030 target
Recycled or composted/digested 28% 27% 75%
Energy from Waste 71% 72% <50%
Incinerated (without energy/heat capture) 2% 0.8% 0%
Landfill 0.2% 0.2% Close to 0%

We already benchmark our suppliers against various criteria including recycling rates and social sustainability. In 2025, we will request individual carbon footprints associated with our customers’ waste services from our suppliers and encourage them to reduce these in line with Net Zero.

 

 

For landfill, collection, transportation and landfill emissions (‘gate to grave’) are included. For combustion and recycling, GHG Protocol conversion factors consider transport to an energy recovery or materials reclamation facility only, with subsequent emissions attributed to electricity generation or recycled material production respectively. Emissions from energy recovery, recycling, composting and anaerobic digestion are attributed to the user of the recycled materials, not the producer of the waste, in line with GHG Protocol Guidelines.

 

Telephone and broadband services

In 2024 we launched our Telecoms directorate. Our partner in this field has an AA ESG rating from MSCI.

Technology

How we purchase and reuse laptops still has the largest impact on emissions from purchased goods and services (representing almost a third of these). It is also one of the categories most in our control. We included actions to reduce the emissions and waste associated with our use of technology (software, data and hardware) in our 2030 Sustainability Strategy.

Our emissions from software subscriptions have decreased because many software suppliers are sourcing zero carbon electricity and offsetting using high quality carbon credits, so were rated 0.00 in the ONS spend based emissions factors in 2024.

Our emissions from building maintenance and construction returned to pre-2023 levels this year, because we moved to our new HQ last year.

Rates have not been included this year, as we are awaiting a business rate re-valuation for Rateable Value following refurbishment of our HQ at Peterlee.

Business travel has reduced slightly this year and employees car share when possible.

For laptops, instead of using the spend based method using UK government figures, which rates even the manufacture of laptops to be low carbon (perhaps due to zero carbon electricity and transport or offsetting), we report a figure associated with the whole life cycle of laptops. In 2024 we bought 134 laptops, and the average footprint of a laptop is calculated by Circular Computing to be 331kg. This results in a laptop footprint of 44 tonnes in 2024.

For waste, we no longer include emissions associated with our supply chain (disposal) as well as collection, because it is mostly treated and disposed of via recycling and incineration. Emissions associated with these methods are assigned to the recycled products manufactured and the energy produced, in line with the GHG Protocol. The UK government also reduced spend based factors for many disposal methods by 70% this year.

For suppliers that have not yet reported their actual emissions to us, we have had to use the spend-based method, which is based on average emissions per £1 spend for each industry SIC code of the product/service purchased.

The spend-based method results in SIC codes potentially being assigned incorrectly to suppliers and fails to reflect the impact of choosing more sustainable suppliers or asking our suppliers to measure their footprint and reduce it. Therefore, we will request carbon emissions information from our suppliers annually and provide support with calculating them.

However, as we report by calendar year and many other companies report by financial year, this would move our reporting to the end of each year and would not enable us to report our SECR with our annual accounts in Q2.

Next year we may choose to report Scope 3 emissions one year in arrears.

 

Everflow Emissions Footprint Report 2024

Electricity and heating

We have a hybrid working policy which allows employees to work from home some of the week. As well as calculating the carbon footprint of our office spaces, we have therefore included emissions associated with home working in our Scope 3 emissions.

The proportion of our electricity and heating used on home working has increased in due to increased home working, but now a lot more is used on office electricity than on office gas and coolants, as we would expect because our new HQ has no gas and we didn’t need any refrigerant top-ups in 2024.

Unfortunately, increased home working does not directly translate into decreased heating and power bills at our offices. Many companies have not considered the increased emissions associated with employees working from home. However, we’ve calculated that these are, on average, offset by the decrease in employee commuting.

We carried out a detailed employee survey in January 2024 to understand how often employees worked from home and how employee’s home energy use varied when they did so. This had the added benefit of identifying actions we could take to help employees reduce their energy bills, and we issued advice the same month, and again in November 2024.

In 2023, 57% of our employees worked from home less than 2 days per week. This year, only 24% did, which will have reduced potential emissions from employee commuting. This is reflected in the increased carbon emissions from home working, which has increased by 82% from 27 to 49 tonnes since 2023.

Travel

Most of our emissions associated with travel were from employee commuting (83% – 148 tonnes CO2e). This has stayed the same as last year, but has reduced per employee, given the significant increase in home working and our growth from 172 to 192 FTE.

Our January 2025 employee survey was mandatory and asked for the size of car for the first time, which enabled us to calculate employee commuting emissions with greater accuracy. We also used previous surveys to estimate commuting by employees who left during 2024.

  • 79% of employees travelled to work by fossil fuelled cars, which has increased slightly from 76% in 2023. 8% of employees used EVs or hybrids and 7% used public or zero emission modes of transport. Employees who commuted by car share stayed the same at 15% of car commuters.
  • Although the mean distance travelled to work reduced slightly from 18 to 17 miles, the proportion travelling less than 20 miles to get to work increased from 45% to 61%.
  • 17% of employees commuted by car to work 5 days a week in 2023 (a slight decrease from 20% last year), and 68% commuted by car 2 or 3 days a week (up from 60% last year).
  • In addition, 78% were still driving alone, still only 4% used public transport and 4% cycled or walked. 1% were based remotely.
  • 12 employees mainly came by fully electric car (increase of 5) and 7 by hybrid (increase of 4). 30 employees (increase from 16) were car sharing (12%).

During 2022, we launched a salary sacrifice Electric Vehicle leasing scheme for our employees. Nine current employees have taken this opportunity to switch away from a fossil fueled car. We also coordinate a car sharing matching scheme every six months.

In 2022, we also launched a hybrid working policy which allowed most employees to work from home 2-3 days a week. We calculate that every additional day per week that employees work from home should save an average of 5 tonnes of CO2e from commuting, and add 4.5 tonnes of CO2e from additional heating and electricity use in the home, so a net half a tonne saving.

Regarding business travel, we identified that we could encourage greater use of greener hotels, public transport and car sharing when visiting other offices or travelling to other meetings and conferences, by revising our travel and expenses policy. This was launched in early 2023. In 2023, our employees drove a total of 66,743 business miles, generating 21 tonnes CO2e at a cost of £31,457 to the business.

Most of the flights booked by the company are associated with one remote working Director who travels monthly to spend a week in the office, and their emissions are offset by the airline as standard.

Our latest survey found that three quarters of employees work from home at least two days per week (up from two thirds last year).

This, coupled with new employees mostly living closer to our new HQ and more car sharing, is why our commuting emissions have decreased, and we expect this to continue as more employees switch to EVs.

Emission reduction activities in 2024

Collection type

Prepared new supplier survey considering all areas of ESG as well as carbon emissions.

Set target for 20% physical, non-consumable products to be second hand or have recycled content in 2025.

Buildings energy consumption

Worked with landlord to monitor water and energy consumption while a new café and gym were introduced at HQ. Gained control of our energy management system and moved into the ground floor of HQ (doubling floor space).

Stopped heating, ventilation, and cooling system from operating out of hours unnecessarily.

No fugitive emissions from escapes of refrigerant gases at both sites.

Technology

Our landlord at Nuneaton completed the installation of efficient taps and toilets in shared washrooms, resulting in a reduction in consumption. We installed sub meters for the café and gym.

Trained IT team to replace laptop parts.
Bought second hand office furniture and IT equipment at auction.
Donated any excess furniture and monitors to local charities, and disposed of electronic waste responsibly under waste electronics regulations (WEEE).

Reducing consumption and waste

Monitored energy and water use to identify usage spikes and potential leaks.
Electricity sub meters (buzz bars) installed at Nuneaton office revealed we use a lot more than had been assumed for our office space in previous years.

New Waste Reduction Strategy and Policy, with target of 50% office waste recycled/composted in 2025 and 75% by 2030. Similar targets set for our customers’ waste.

Universal employee sustainability training delivered to a third of employees.

Employee travel and home working

  • Company-wide hybrid working policy enables employees to work at least 2 days a week from home widely taken up.
  • Annual mandatory employee survey on commuting and home working to identify ways to reduce related emissions achieved 97% completion.
  • Fuel and energy saving advice for employees on home working (annual).
  • EV salary sacrifice scheme taken up by 9 employees.
  • Car sharing matching scheme now every 6 months.
  • BiketoWork salary sacrifice scheme wasn’t used in 2024.

Emissions reduction initiatives planned for 2025

Initiative
1. Get Net Zero by 2040 and other ESG commitments from top 15% by spend suppliers.
2. Increase the suppliers we get scope 3 emissions from, to reduce use of spend and SIC-Code based averages for our carbon footprint.
3. Research Power Purchase Agreements to source 100% zero carbon electricity generation at Peterlee, and influence Nuneaton landlord to do the same.
4. Train contract managers and procurement champions to consider sustainability when onboarding new suppliers or purchasing products and services and roll out sustainability training to all employees.
5. Change refuse contracts for Peterlee to enable greater monitoring and segregation of waste streams (particularly paper/card, food waste and other Dry Mixed Recycling) to reduce proportion of waste burnt or buried and influence Nuneaton landlord to do the same.
6. Donate unwanted furniture and electricals to charity.
7. Investigate efficiency of our cloud computing.
8. Optimise heating and lighting at HQ and introduce switch-off procedure.
9. Investigate best practice for sustainable IT equipment settings and push out to all feasible assets. 
10. Introduce out-reader for Peterlee water meter to eliminate groundwater flooding issue with reads and install water logger at our Peterlee HQ.

METHODOLOGY

Produced in accordance with the GHG Reporting Protocol – Corporate Standard method
For the period 01/01/2024 to 31/12/2024.
Data collected from primary information sources, including direct building manager interviews, employee surveys, employee FTE lists and official documents (bills, invoices and purchase ledger).

  • Excludes emissions from purchased wholesale water and wastewater services on behalf of our customers (but we still offset these).
  • Average waste disposal assumed for number of employees, sector and size of buildings.
  • Emissions associated with procurement and services, including business travel without recorded mileage, and hotels, are based on expenditure and assigned SIC codes.
  • Emissions associated with employee commuting based on distance by vehicle fuel type and size (small/medium/large).
  • Employee commuting and home working emissions calculated for all employees this year, including leavers.
  • Included optional emissions associated with working from home, including electricity T&E.
  • Modelled using DEFRA Emission Factors 2024 and Atmospheric emissions: greenhouse gas emissions intensity by industry (ONS, 2024)

All our emissions (including those omitted above) were offset from 2021-24 through purchase of carbon credits. We will purchase credits to cover our own 2025 emissions at the end of 2025.

Full-time equivalent (FTE) staff 192

Square meters of office occupied 1,542

Business Carbon Reduction Plan

Climate change is an existential threat to our planet, the human race and our way of life. It is also creating wide injustices across the world. We want to be part of the solution, rather than one of the causes of the problem. The UK government has committed to businesses becoming net zero by 2050, in line with the global Paris Agreement to limit climate change to less than 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels – the limit which scientists say is required to prevent catastrophic, uncontrollable climate change.

Businesses can have an enormous influence on their various stakeholders – suppliers, customers, competitors, and employees. We urge other businesses to make plans to reduce and eliminate their carbon emissions, because together, we can all make a big impact. Small and medium sized businesses make up most of the UK business stock (and our customers), and no one is too small to have an influence.

Climate change demands urgent and universal action. In 2021, Everflow was the first retailer to make all our customers’ water and wastewater supplies carbon offset. We also signed The Climate Pledge, which commits us to being net zero carbon by 2040 across Scopes 1, 2 and 3 of the GHG Protocol – ten years ahead of The Paris Agreement (2050).

As part of this, we will:

  • Measure and report greenhouse gas emissions at least annually
  • Implement decarbonisation strategies through real business change and innovations, including efficiency improvements, renewable energy, materials reductions, and other carbon emission elimination strategies (See how below.)
  • Neutralise any of our remaining emissions with additional, quantifiable, real, permanent, and socially beneficial offsets.

Our ambition is to achieve net zero for our own operations before 2030. Water and wastewater wholesalers also plan to reach net zero for their operational emissions before 2030.

2024 update

For 2024, we decided to offset all of our emissions including our customers’ utilities. We measured our emissions until October 2024 and have estimated our (and our customers’) emissions for the remainder of the year.

During 2025, we will be only offsetting our direct emissions – so our customers’ utility usage will not be offset anymore. This is to encourage all businesses to decarbonise, and because we understand that everyone is on a net zero journey of their own.

In line with our climate pledge and the Oxford principles for offsetting, we are gradually increasing the proportion of carbon removal credits we offset our services with. We chose two carbon projects when offsetting our emissions – the Delta ‘Blue’ Carbon Removal project in Pakistan and the Mai Ndombe REDD+ tropical forest protection project.

The Delta ‘Blue’ Carbon Removal project – Pakistan

The ‘blue’ carbon removal project in Pakistan will remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by restoring mangrove forests on 226,000 hectares of degraded tidal wetlands in Sindh Province to:

  • Help reduce climate change
  • Adapt to climate change by protecting coastal areas from erosion, storms, and tidal waves
  • Promote biodiversity by providing breeding grounds for aquatic organisms, and
  • Improve the livelihoods of local communities.

The Mai Ndombe REDD+ Tropical Forest Protection project

The second project we’re supporting represents the most important way to prevent and reduce greenhouse gas emissions – protecting tropical rainforests which store carbon. In 2023, the Democratic Republic of Congo emitted more than 10% of global emissions from land use change due to tropical forest logging – equivalent to Brazil and Russia.

The Mai Ndombe REDD+ tropical forest protection project protects nearly 250,000 hectares of forest from industrial logging, unsustainable fuel wood extraction and slash-and-burn agriculture. The first of its kind in the Congo Basin, it’s estimated to avoid more than 175 megatons of CO2 equivalent emissions over 30 years.

2023 update

During 2023, we decided to buy carbon credits to offset our customers’ utility supplies at the end of our financial year instead of in advance.

This means we will buy carbon credits after our annual carbon footprint has been calculated, instead of estimating how many to buy based on how much we expect to grow. Our new process will ensure that we always purchase the correct amount of carbon credits, ensuring that emissions arising from our customers’ utility supplies are always compensated for, and that we can keep our charges low. We commit to calculating our emissions footprint, buying an equivalent amount of quality offsets, and publishing their retirement certificates, before April each following year.

For an informal discussion on how we are reducing carbon emissions for our customers and any more information on our business carbon reduction plan for 2023, please contact makemegreener@everflowutilities.com

You can view our 2023 emissions footprint report here.

2022 update

Please click below to see the 2022 carbon reporting and 2023 plan

2022 Emission Report

2021 update

Please click below to see the 2021 carbon reporting and 2022 plan

2021 Emission Report

2024 carbon certificates

2023 carbon certificates

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If you have any questions or comments about this report or our strategy, please visit us on our website or email us directly.

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