Case studies - Government - Environment Agency

The Environment Agency employs 12,500 staff across 100 sites throughout England and Wales. The organisation wanted to reduce their CO₂ footprint – not only for staff commuting journeys but for business journeys as well.

In 2005/06, the EA’s annual lease and casual business mileage totalled 35 million, producing 8,832 tonnes of CO₂ - of which 82% was associated with single-occupancy journeys. The cost of these miles to the organisation - in expenses claims alone - was about £6 million. If only a further 10% of this mileage was undertaken as shared journeys it would save around £400,000 per year; a saving of £1 million could be achieved if this rose to 22%.

EACarshare was the first car-share scheme to be rolled out across all offices belonging to a large public body throughout England and Wales. They wanted it to be structured so that it would enable regional and office-specific monitoring and reporting. This also created competition between the departments as to who could make their schemes most effective.

The benefits for the staff include cutting fuel costs, reducing stress and making travel more convenient and sociable.

Within 18 months, EACarshare had over 2,000 members - with a 31% match rate - who had saved 716,604 miles and 219 tonnes of CO₂.

“As more people sign up and the chances of finding matches increases, these savings look set to rise dramatically,”

said Julia Jarvis.

“Many of our office sites have limited parking, and car-sharers are given priority spaces adjacent to the main entrance of most buildings. Our lease car drivers receive a tax-free allowance of 5p per passenger per mile on business travel, and we are currently investigating a further incentive to reward active business car-shares.

“Despite the financial incentive offered to business car-sharers, the savings to the organisation are still significant. If only 10% of our annual organisational lease and casual business mileage is shared, the savings on travel expenses alone still exceed £575k.”