Managing our Responsibilities / Welcome
Welcome
Welcome to the CSR Annual Review 2008. During the year our business aim was to build on last year's successful integration with IBERDROLA, where ScottishPower was one of the main drivers and principle engines of growth.
In line with IBERDROLA's "multi local" approach, ScottishPower continues to provide details on its social and environmental performance against the 12 impact areas identified back in 2005, while also reporting our enhanced CSR credentials globally as part of the wider IBERDROLA group.
Being a good corporate citizen is even more important in these times of economic uncertainty. Investment, whether in our assets, our existing and future workforce, our local communities, or the environment at large is key to helping the UK and global economies out of the current recession.
IBERDROLA and ScottishPower have invested £1.8 billion in the UK in the last two years and £1.1 billion in 2008 alone.
We have announced plans to spend £39 million over the next three years to protect our most vulnerable customers and we contributed a further £1 million to the ScottishPower Energy People Trust, an independent charity set up to help end fuel poverty in Britain. At the end of 2008, the Trust had awarded over £4.5 million to 103 projects helping over 243,000 individuals in over 105,000 households across Britain.
In addition to the trust we also launched a social tariff called "Fresh Start" in December 2008. 50,000 customers are now benefiting from lower prices via the tariff - in many cases saving more than £200 per year.
Our community investment strategy has always focused on providing training and employability skills to young people and this will be a key focus for our business going forward.
Like a lot of businesses, we have highly skilled staff and we need to ensure we have the skills and capabilities to sustain our future business growth. We must therefore attract young people into the industry as well as train existing staff to fulfil our succession planning requirements.
During 2008, over 1,600 young people benefited from ScottishPower Learning's programmes. Furthermore, 224 staff members participated in these programmes as part of the company's commitment to Community Based Development.
ScottishPower is committed to Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), recognising the tremendous opportunity the UK has to lead the world with this technology and create new skills, jobs and opportunities for growth in the low carbon sector. We have announced plans to install the technology on two of Longannet's four units to extract CO2 from the flue gases, liquefy it and transport it via an existing pipeline for secure storage beneath the North Sea. For further information, see Carbon Capture and Storage.
Furthermore, the ScottishPower Green Energy Trust celebrated its 10th anniversary on World Environment Day, highlighting the invaluable support given by the Trust to over 100 community based renewable energy projects in the UK.
During the year we held stakeholder feedback sessions to canvass opinions on our 2007 CSR Report. We have taken on board many of your comments in terms of content and style, and this year's annual review aims to bring our activity to life through an innovative video-focused CSR TV model.
The style of updating you on our CSR activity this year is therefore very much led by the community groups that we work with and I hope that you will enjoy hearing first hand from some of them as they tell their story about working with us throughout 2008.
I look forward to hearing your feedback.
Nick Horler
Chief Executive Officer
