Own biogas station for UK chain of supermarkets & department stores
The John Lewis Partnership is stepping up its commitment to reducing carbon emissions by building a dedicated biomethane filling station to enable its largest heavy goods vehicles to use a low-carbon alternative to diesel. The new facility is expected to open in December 2020. Alongside this, the Partnership has also announced an ambition to stop using fossil fuels across its entire 4,800 strong transport fleet by 2030.
In March 2019, the employee-owned business pledged to be net zero carbon across its entire operations by 2050 at the latest and its 600 heavy goods vehicles to be switched to low-carbon biomethane by 2028. Since last year, the Partnership has reduced its total operational carbon emissions by 6.6% and emissions from transport have fallen by 6.9%.
The new biomethane station will be built in conjunction with Air Liquide and will be located at the Partnership’s head office in Bracknell, becoming the business’s first on-site natural gas station. It will facilitate the conversion of the Bracknell Waitrose fleet to biomethane and complement natural gas stations already in use near to John Lewis and Waitrose regional distribution centers in Leyland, Lancashire, and in Northampton.
Over the next seven years, the Bracknell site alone will save over 70,000 tons of CO2, equivalent to the carbon footprint produced by over 13,000 UK households. Since 2015, 85 of the Partnership’s heavy diesel vehicles have already been replaced with biomethane trucks, and a further 143 will be purchased and in operation by the end of 2020, making this the largest order of biomethane trucks in the UK.
“The evidence of climate change is all around us, so it’s important we act now using available technology rather than wait for unproven solutions to appear. We are working hard towards our new aim of removing all fossil fuel from our transport fleet by 2030, which will reduce our carbon emissions by over half a million tons and gets us well on the way to our ultimate target of operating a net zero carbon emission fleet,” said Justin Laney, Partner & General Manager of Central Transport at the John Lewis Partnership.
