Total CO2e1 emitted In 2024
633.88 Tonnes
Everflow is a fast-growing, increasingly efficient business. We increased our revenue by 16% (£26 million2) 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,
- We reduced our Scope 1 and 2 emissions per m2 of office space by 8%
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- 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.
[1] Carbon Dioxide Equivalent, the universal unit of measurement to indicate Global Warming Potential of greenhouse gases.
[2] Correct as of 31 March 2025
GHG emissions reporting
*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 from 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.
[3] 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.
[4] MOSL 2024 report, volumetric usage based
[5] 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
Total carbon emissions 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
All our Scope 1 emissions were from natural gas on-site heating as we do not own any fleet.
We moved our HQ from Wynyard Business Park to Whitehouse Business Park in Peterlee in April 2023. However, we were obliged to retain the lease for one of our previous buildings for all of 2023 and 2024. Therefore, there are still some emissions associated with gas and electricity use there.
Our new HQ has no gas supply, so is 100% heated by electricity. It also has air conditioning, which our previous HQ did not have, and our Nuneaton office is heated by both gas and electricity, with air conditioning too. Emissions consider both exclusive and shared areas at Nuneaton, where we have buzz bars fitted to monitor electricity usage in our exclusive area.
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.
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.
[6] 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.
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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.
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Travel
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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
Selected initiatives include:
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Emissions reduction initiatives planned for 2025
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). Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
- 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
Thank you for reading!
If you have any questions or comments about this report or our strategy, please email us directly.
