Telecommunications and IT services provider BT is the UK ICT sector’s largest producer of carbon emissions, but is also the company that has taken the most action to get its emissions under control, according to the newly published CRC Energy Efficiency scheme’s performance league table.
The Environment Agency today published the performance league table, revealing which organisations operating in the UK produce the most carbon emissions.
Analysing the companies from the IT and telecommunications sectors reveals that BT is by far largest producer of carbon. The company, which operates much of the UK’s telecommunications infrastructure, produced 12 billion tonnes during 2010/11 reporting year.
That figure was more than six times the carbon emissions of the second largest emitter, fellow carrier Cable & Wireless, which produced 2 billion tonnes during the year. In third place was IBM, with 1.6 billion tonnes.
Organisations were also given an ‘early action metric’, based on the degree to which they have installed smart meters and whether their energy usage has been deemed efficient by an independent body such as the Carbon Trust.
Among the listed ICT providers, BT also ranked highest in this early action metric, scoring 95 out of 100. It was followed by IT services provider Logica and European telco Telefonica.
IT companies that scored zero on the early action metric included data centre hosting provider Global Switch, which was the fourth largest carbon emitter, and network operator Level 3 Communications, which ranked tenth by emissions.
The CRC Energy Efficiency performance league table itself ranks organisations according to a weighted score, which takes both emissions and the early action metric into account (in future years it will also include annual growth).
When ranked according to this metric, BT, Logica and Telefonica again took the top three places.
