The EA has committed to reaching Net Zero Carbon by 2050.
Reducing their total carbon emissions, including those of their supply chain, by 45% by 2030 and by 90% in 2050. With the remaining 10% rest offset through community focused projects that harmlessly lock up carbon and offer wider benefits for people and nature, such as reduced flood risk and more habitat to boost biodiversity.
Project context
The Net Zero Carbon Roadmap Projects are leading on achieving the 45% target – delivering carbon budgeting, updated carbon management processes and decarbonisation across the FCRM Capital Programme, working closely with CDF Lot 1 and Lot 2 partners.
The projects are part of a wider Net Zero Carbon for Infrastructure programme. Within this programme AECOM are supporting four major projects covering the roadmap to carbon reduction in the capital programme, taking this learning to the Asset Management programme, developing future ready carbon tools and readiness for PAS2080.
The project sets out the carbon management and reporting standards that capital projects should achieve as well as developing, implementing and then embedding new processes for carbon budget setting to track project performance.
AECOM have been involved in the project since January 2022 and are providing project management services to manage the projects and have led the development of implementation plans, project tool management and reporting into both NZC4I and EA Delivery Boards. A project team made of Project Executive, Project Managers, Business Analysists and Carbon Technical Specialists are developing the tools and processes, with AECOM leading on managing the team, tracking progress and leading on stakeholder engagement and facilitation.
Prior years were focused on building confidence by testing these new processes, developing in-year reporting and starting to transition the capital programme to produce and report on carbon budgets. The programme has moved forward since this time through testing and piloting into delivering the continuous improvement into the business, with 25/26 looking to realise the benefits and enable projects to achieve carbon reduction.
The project is national in scale and involves close working with internal stakeholders at all levels, from end users to senior delivery managers, as well as framework managers within the Environment Agencies supply chain.
The ask of AECOM
AECOM were asked to provide Project Manager and Project Executive resource to manage the Net Zero Roadmap Project and its capital Carbon Budgeting workstream. Managing its progression from concept, through testing and pilot phase, into transition to live. As the programme within NZC4I has grown and developed, significant investment was secured for 24/25 onwards and as such AECOM have supported the establishment of the project and programme controls to manage the new projects and workstreams – developing project briefing documents and management plans, along with governance and assurance models.
AECOM have also been commissioned to manage and maintain the existing EA Carbon Management Tools – performing enhancements and updates to these and ensuring continuity of the products. In 25/26 the team will be supporting the further digital improvements by creating a new “normalised” version of the tools that will for the basis of use and ingesting into internal carbon data warehouses.