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The Energy Saving Trust’s ‘Behind the Wheel’ report examines business leaders’ attitudes to company car fleets and their impact on the environment. The report reveals a worrying lack of interest from many companies over their vehicles’ impact on the environment and the bottom line. Company car fleets are frequently the second largest overhead a company incurs – yet very few organisations raise the issue as a boardroom agenda item. Remarkably the report reveals that 31 per cent of UK businesses still believe that running a more environmentally friendly company car fleet will cost money. In contrast, figures from the Energy Saving Trust reveal that implementing green fleet management could save UK businesses £2.6 billion a year at no additional cost. To put it simply, when it comes to company car fleets, the business case is the environmental case.
In addition, separate Energy Saving Trust research shows that consumers are becoming more insistent on a company demonstrating its environmental credentials. Over half (58 per cent) of consumers say they still want to see more evidence of what companies are doing about climate change. Yet, in the Behind the Wheel report, fewer than half of the companies surveyed (48 per cent) have a CSR or environmental policy and of those only 42 per cent of companies take into consideration the impact of their vehicles on the environment in these policies.
Companies who have shown leadership at a high level are the ones who are implementing green fleet policies with tremendous success – in terms of carbon and monetary savings. As with any serious operational restructure, buy-in at the top is essential.
The Energy Saving Trust, with funding from the Department for Transport, works to cut carbon emissions and air pollution from the road transport sector by promoting cleaner, lower carbon vehicles and fuels, efficient driving techniques and low carbon transport alternatives.
