Supplier name: PCI-PAL PLC (which includes PCI-PAL (U.K.) Ltd) – (the “Group”)
Publication date: January 2024
Commitment to achieving Net Zero
PCI-PAL PLC is committed to achieving Net Zero emissions by 2040.
Baseline Emissions Footprint
Baseline emissions are a record of the greenhouse gases that have been produced in the past and were produced prior to the introduction of any strategies to reduce emissions. Baseline emissions are the reference point against which emissions reduction can be measured.
The year from 1st July 2021 to 30th June 2022 was the first year the Group measured its emissions. This year will be treated as the Baseline Year 2022.
Baseline Year: 2022
Additional Details relating to the Baseline Emissions calculations.
The Group is a SaaS based organisation that markets and sells its products over the Cloud. As a result, it has less of an impact on the environment than many other types of businesses. However, the Group still needs office space, undertakes travel, and uses public cloud data centres to provide its services to its customers. Accordingly, these areas need to be carefully monitored to ensure that the Group’s environmental impact is reduced to an acceptable level whilst continuing to allow the business to grow and prosper.
The Group has primarily adopted a “remote-first” policy for its employees wherever they are located in the world. This has benefitted the environment by substantially reducing commuting travel and has also reduced the amount of office space required to run the business. However, the directors acknowledge that it is important for employees to meet face-to-face to enable the sharing of ideas and the building of strong working relationships and culture. As a result, regular meetings are held face-to-face with employees travelling to attend. Where possible we encourage the use of public transport but recognise that this is impractical in certain regions.
We have contracted working arrangements with the shared office service, WeWork, which is utilised across the world for occasional collaborative office working and meetings. The Group does not have control over the management of these office spaces, however WeWork has stated it is committed to driving down the impact it has on the environment by sourcing its power from renewable sources and using energy efficient heating and lighting.
The Group does not sell computer hardware to its customers, nor provide software for use ‘on-premises’. The Group only hosts its operating platform (and associated development and testing) at Amazon Web Services (“AWS”) datacentres. We have instances in London, Ireland, the US, Canada and Australia. AWS has a published commitment to have all its energy requirements sourced fully from renewable energy by 2025. It has recently published that it is on track to achieve this ambition. As a third-party user of the AWS services, we cannot report the power usage of our platform.
However, we can confirm that as at June 2022, the end of the Baseline period, 85% of the power used by AWS was sourced from fully renewable energy.
As well as the global WeWork office presence, the Group has a one leased office in the UK based in Ipswich – totalling circa 4,000 sq ft. As detailed above the Group has a “remotefirst” policy, which means employees primarily work from home and attend meetings periodically. A number of PCI Pal’s back office team have the majority of their people based in the Suffolk and Essex areas and so they use the office regularly. At the end of the Baseline period, the Group employed 103 personnel (as at December 2023 this number had increased to 124). The leased office incorporates energy saving equipment such as LED lighting and electric vehicle charging.
There are no direct emissions from assets owned or controlled by the Group, such as company-owned vehicles, therefore there are no Scope 1 emissions to report. Instead, in 2022, the UK subsidiary introduced an Electric Vehicle salary sacrifice scheme to encourage employees to reduce their emissions for commuting, business travel and personal use.
Where CO2 emissions data is not available directly from a reliable source, the relevant GHG conversion factor as published by Department for Energy Security and Net Zero2 for 2022 were used to calculate an estimate of the CO2 equivalent (“tCO2e”) emissions.
Included in the Scope 2 emissions is the electricity purchased for the Ipswich office which in the Base line year totalled 29,958 kWh, which created 5.64 tCO2e. Approximately 60% of the office electricity consumed is purchased directly from a sustainable energy provider, with reported emissions of 0.183 kg CO2 per kWh, which is lower than the published conversion factor.
Three of the five reportable categories for Scope 3 emissions are not applicable to the Group as follows:
- Upstream transportation and distribution – the Group does not purchase any physical products that require transport or distribution.
- Waste generated in operations – the Group does not generate any physical waste from the delivery of its product. General office waste is kept to a minimum through a company-wide digitalisation project, utilising Docusign for e-signing and Dropbox for document storage.
- Downstream transportation and distribution – the Group delivers all of its products and services remotely over the Cloud to its customers.
In relation to Business travel and Employee commuting, the Group measures:
- Total business car miles claimed in the year and paid for by the Group (net of any miles claimed that were driven by a Full Electric Vehicle).
- Total business air journey miles paid for by the Group.
- Total commuting miles by car (return journey) made to a place of work by employees (net of any miles driven by a Full Electric Vehicle).
The Group does not currently measure journeys made by train or bus.
The above data was used to calculate the Group’s Scope 3 emissions by applying the relevant published conversion factors.
Baseline year emissions:
| EMISSIONS | TOTAL (tCO2e) |
| Scope 1 | Nil |
| Scope 2 | 5.64 |
| Scope 3 (including business travel and employee commuting) | 110.64 |
| Total Emissions | 116.24 |
Current Emissions Reporting
Reporting Year: 2023
| EMISSIONS | TOTAL (tCO2e) |
| Scope 1 | Nil |
| Scope 2 | 3.02 |
| Scope 3 (including business travel and employee commuting) | 181.72 |
| Total Emissions | 184.73 |
Emissions reduction targets
Scope 1 emissions have been eliminated already.
Scope 2 emissions will be further reduced by ensuring use of energy from fully certified carbon neutral suppliers.
Scope 3 emissions will be reduced by enforcing even greater use of video conferencing, greater remote-first working and careful planning of work trips and meetings.
Carbon Reduction Projects
In 2022 the UK subsidiary introduced an Electric Vehicle salary sacrifice scheme. The Group does not provide any other Company cars. The Electric Car Scheme reported that by June 2023 an estimated 23.84 tCO2e had been saved by the employees switching to full Electric Vehicle.
Completed Carbon Reduction Initiatives
The Group carbon impact has been at the forefront of the Group’s initiatives since the business foundation in 2016. The Group had adopted a remote-first working policy well before the COVID pandemic hit. Therefore, the Group’s existing Carbon footprint is already low. From 2030, once all possible actions have been taken to reduce emissions, the Group will look to offset any remaining Carbon footprint with offset investments such as planting forestry or investing in Carbon credits linked to other green measures e.g. carbon removal from the air.
Declaration and Sign Off
This Carbon Reduction Plan has been completed in accordance with PPN 06/21 and associated guidance and reporting standard for Carbon Reduction Plans.
Emissions have been reported and recorded in accordance with the published reporting standard for Carbon Reduction Plans and the GHG Reporting Protocol corporate standard1 and uses the appropriate Government emission conversion factors for greenhouse gas company reporting2, unless reliable data specific to the Group’s emissions is available.
Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions have been reported in accordance with SECR requirements, and the required subset of Scope 3 emissions have been reported in accordance with the published reporting standard for Carbon Reduction Plans and the Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard3.
This Carbon Reduction Plan has been reviewed and signed off by the board of directors.
Signed on behalf of the Group:
J Barham
Chief Executive
1 https://ghgprotocol.org/corporate-standard
2 https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/government-conversion-factors-for-company-reporting
3 https://ghgprotocol.org/standards/scope-3-standard
