climate change

For a long time now, Tarmac has been fully committed to supporting the UK's ambition of net zero carbon emissions and collaborating with our supply chain and customers to do the same. Across our value chains there are many technologies that can support significant advances to reduce these emissions. Most of these are well known today and simply require scaling-up and the right policy environment. Others require further research and development.

We have continued to apply a whole life approach and have taken steps to tackle CO₂ emissions right across our business. We are engaging with our supply chain to reduce CO₂ from the goods and services we buy. We review our manufacturing operations and transport to understand where emissions arise, the reduction technologies available and take action to implement them. We also use whole life cycle thinking to innovate lower carbon solutions that can support our customers to reduce CO₂ during the construction process, or during the use of their building or infrastructure asset.

In 2020, Tarmac continued to invest in modern efficient plant and equipment. We have created a new rail connected construction materials hub to serve the Birmingham region at Washwood Heath. Rail connectivity reduces transport emissions and local transport impacts. The new hub operates using on-site generated renewable electricity and the manufacturing plants are designed to produce lower carbon concretes and asphalts, such as ULTILOW, (which is produced at lower temperatures), and to use up to 40 percent of recycled old road surfaces in new asphalt products.

We have also announced plans to invest in a new cement kiln chlorine bypass at our Tunstead cement operation in Derbyshire. This new technology will enable the plant to significantly increase its use of waste-derived fuels in place of fossil fuels.

At four of our Alun Griffiths sites we have trialled solar panel generators in place of diesel powered generators, to establish a more sustainable solution to off-grid power for sites that cannot be connected to mains electricity. The solar panel generators provided a carbon saving of 45.5 tCO₂e.

We believe that improving energy efficiency and optimising plant performance is good practice in reducing CO₂. We use our certified ISO 50001 Energy Management System to drive continuous improvement in energy, set specific energy consumption (SEC) and CO₂ targets and to monitor performance at every one of our manufacturing sites. These targets are tightened each year to drive continuous improvement and investment in lower CO₂ plant and operations. Our ISO 50001 system is independently assessed each year to helps us ensure that all our operations are compliant with regulatory requirements, such as the UK Government’s Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS).

As with many businesses, Tarmac experienced a pronounced reduction in business travel and its associated CO₂ emissions during the COVID-19 pandemic. As we return to a new normal, we would expect business travel to increase from 2020 levels, but we intend to take advantage of the lessons learnt, for example, by encouraging employees to travel only where necessary, to use greener transport options, to continue to use video conferencing and by increasing flexible working arrangements.

We are taking other actions on emissions from business travel and are the first in our sector to sign up to EV100, a commitment to upgrade our entire 2,000-strong fleet of corporate cars and vans to electric vehicles (EV), as well as installing EV charging points and infrastructure in key business locations across the country. The EV100 is a global initiative bringing together businesses committed to accelerating the transition to electric vehicles.

We continue to support our customers to deliver the transition to a low carbon built environment by redesigning and rethinking the way we make our products, the constituent materials used, considering capital carbon and assessing the whole-life performance benefits our products can bring. We provide a wide range of products that help our customers save carbon now and during the life time of their project.

Our innovative solutions include:

• Improving the durability of our products, meaning that products need to be replaced or maintained less frequently.

• Use of recycled or secondary materials in products, such as ground granulated blast furnace slag and fly ash instead of clinker to reduce the CO₂ in cement and concrete or use old road surfacing (Recycled Asphalt Planings) to replace primary materials in new asphalt.

• Creating new products that have a lower carbon footprint.

• Providing product carbon footprint information enabling better choices about design and material selection.

• Raising awareness through collaboration, early engagement and providing guidance like our Solutions Guides that demonstrate how our products and solutions can be used to reduce operational CO₂ emissions from buildings and infrastructure.

CO₂ in cement and concrete is commonly reduced by substituting it with a proportion of a secondary component, such as fly ash or blast furnace slag. Tarmac already provide a wide range of these low carbon concretes. These are currently limited by UK concrete product standards to just one type of addition for each type of cement. With funding from the Government’s Industrial Energy Efficiency Accelerator (IEEA), Tarmac is working with MPA Cement, the Building Research Establishment and other cement producers to develop new lower carbon multi-component cements and demonstrate they are fit for purpose in a wide range of UK concrete applications. This will open the way for these lower carbon options to be used confidently by architects, specifiers and designers.

South Wales Industrial Cluster (SWIC)
The South Wales Industrial Cluster is a group of major industrial companies, academics and other experts in the region stretching from the Pembrokeshire Coast to the Severn Bridge along the M4 corridor. This group is working collaboratively to identify ways to tackle common and unique challenges of decarbonisation and clean growth. Tarmac is directly involved in projects on defining a net zero roadmap for South Wales, deployment of CO₂ reducing technologies and circular economy.

Scottish Industrial Cluster (NECCUS)
Tarmac is a member of NECCUS (pronounced nexus), an alliance of industry, government and experts, united to drive the changes and support the programmes needed to reduce CO₂ emissions from industrial sources in Scotland and beyond. At its heart is a project known as Acorn which is set to deliver a carbon capture and storage programme for Scotland by 2024 and which can be scaled-up to support other projects across the UK, as well as enabling hydrogen to be used more widely as a source of clean energy. Tarmac participates in the work to define a Scotland Net Zero Roadmap.

Peak Cluster
Tarmac is collaborating with other companies in and around the Peak District to collectively find solutions to decarbonise the region. The Peak Cluster links into the Net Zero North West initiative and Hynet project. For the construction industry to align with the UK’s net zero commitments and deliver CO₂ emissions reductions, it will require support and funding from central and devolved governments across a range of policy measures. The Governments own Industrial Decarbonisation Strategy recognises that industry should not wrongly lose their competitiveness because of their exposure to more stringent emissions targets than their global competitors. It is vital that decarbonisation is achieved through a just transition and without displacing domestic manufacturing and jobs overseas. Responsible corporate lobbying is a key principle underpinning our interactions with policy makers directly, and indirectly through industry associations, in relation to all aspects of the Tarmac business, including climate change.

We are a key signatory of the UK Government’s Infrastructure Carbon Review (ICR) which aims to cut 24 million tonnes CO₂ from UK infrastructure projects by 2050. In support of the ICR Tarmac played an active role in the development of PAS 2080, the world’s first specification for Carbon Management in Infrastructure. During 2020, we have worked with the Green Construction Board’s Low Carbon Concrete Group (LCCG). The LCCG consists of over 18 organisations from the construction sector working together to develop a route map for adoption by the industry to assist designers, engineers, clients and the wider construction sector to reduce the carbon impact of construction activities. The low carbon concrete route map will be launched in Autumn 2021 and will help construction professionals to understand and select the lowest carbon concrete design options for their projects.

At the end of 2020, we had achieved a 24 percent reduction in CO₂ per tonne of product compared to 1990. We categorise our greenhouse gas emissions into direct and indirect sources in line with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.