A raft of green travel initiatives such as teleconferencing and
telematics have helped energy company E.on reduce its business mileage by almost 500,000 this year.

The initiatives, operated by the company’s shared service provider, Business Services, reduced mileage by 484,410 miles between January and July 2009 compared to the same period last year.

As a result, E.on has won an Energy Saving Trust Green Fleet Hero Award in the business mileage category.

Chris Woodhall, green travel manager at E.on, said: “We’re committed to making a real difference so we’re all proud to receive this award.”

As a result of winning the award, E.on is publishing an information booklet produced with the company’s fleet manager, David Graham.

Graham manages a fleet of 7,000 vehicles (3,200 cars and 3,800 commercial vehicles).

He said: “We all have a responsibility to use energy wisely in a way that reduces our impact on the environment.

“From a fleet management perspective we have helped reduce the carbon emissions of our own business miles by 20%, which is the same as taking 1,780 cars off the road.”

Among the initiatives taken by Graham are a CO2 emissions cap on company vehicles (165g/km – the current fleet average is 143g/km), agreeing with Europcar that 80% of the vehicles it hires will have CO2 emissions of 150g/km or less, introducing green travel measures (a free company bus saves 472 miles a day) and introducing a range of electronic meeting solutions such as video-conferencing (see panel).

Graham has also rolled out a telematics system in the firm’s CVs. Around 750 units have been fitted to monitor accurate CO2 emissions data (Fleet News, July 23).

He added: “We have also provided targeted management information to allow us to identify behaviours and enable our operational managers to make better decisions on vehicle selection, reducing mileage and CO2 emissions.”

Other initiatives include operating one of the UK’s largest corporate car share schemes, with 2,500 people taking part.

"And 4,000 employees take part its green travel scheme, which allocates staff 50 pence each time they cycle, walk, car share or catch public transport to get to work.

Real savings

E.on’s use of video-conferencing is making huge savings.

It uses a ‘telepresence’ system – essentially video-conferencing on a higher scale with high-definition cameras and special screens which make the participants feel as though they are in the same room – to cut the number of miles its staff drive.

The Cisco Telepresence 3000 system it uses costs 46 pence per hour in energy to run, compared to the average cost of a trip between Nottingham and its Coventry headquarters of £60 for a hire car.

And the savings are even more substantial when it is an overseas trip. Heading from Birmingham to Düsseldorf would cost £279 in flight costs alone.

E.on estimates the technology has saved 100 tonnes of CO2 and 3,000 hours of travel time in the first six months of 2009.

Michael Risch, telepresence project manager at E.on Düsseldorf, said: “ It is like a real meeting, apart from the fact that you are not able to shake hands.

You get the impression that people are sitting together in one room.”

E.on also operates lower-tech video-conferencing and staff can use desktop webcams for ad-hoc meetings.