Climate change

Progress 2007 cont...

Working with others

We have a responsibility and an opportunity to work with others. In tackling our indirect carbon footprint, we can share knowledge and resources with others to make a positive contribution.

For example, in South Korea and Thailand we are working with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) to further people's understanding of climate change and help local communities actively engage with the issues. In partnership with UNEP we hold an Environment Painting and Writing Contest for children in South Korea which attracts over 25,000 participants annually. In 2007 we announced an initiative to plant nine million trees in Thailand's natural forest reserves over five years. As well as UNEP, we are working with the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Foundation for Khao Yai National Park Protection to achieve this. It is estimated that this will help reduce CO2e in the atmosphere by nine million tonnes over 40 years.

Progress with our Sustainable Technology Fund Our £100 million Sustainable Technology Fund is being used to support large-scale carbon reduction technologies at our stores and warehouses worldwide and in our supply chain. In 2007 these included:

• wind turbines on store roofs and in car parks;
• CHP & trigeneration (CHP plus cooling), which generates low-carbon electricity for our stores and distribution centres;
• ground source heat pumps, which use the constant temperature of the earth to keep the temperature in our stores ambient;
• photovoltaic cells to power the tills in our stores;
• roof lights to allow us to make maximum use of natural light in our stores;
• rainwater collection to use in toilets and car washes; and
• automated recycling units to make it easier for customers to recycle with us.

Progress with the Sustainable Consumption Institute In 2007 we began a five-year, £25 million funding programme for a new Sustainable Consumption Institute (SCI) at the University of Manchester.

The SCI has been established to develop research to define and accelerate the steps required to make a successful transition to a low-carbon economy and society. The SCI believes that a revolution in sustainable consumption will play a pivotal role in this transition, and that willing consumer action must be at the heart of it.

All research will be published and freely available and the Institute will build global partnerships across multiple disciplines including engineering, economics, geography, architecture, natural sciences and the social sciences. The SCI will also run a doctoral teaching programme and we will sponsor a permanent chair of Sustainable Consumption.

Tesco will work with academics at the University of Manchester to develop areas for research but will have no influence over the findings. The questions the SCI will work on during 2008 are centred on the following three areas.

• Business - What should retail and wider business look like in a low-carbon world - in terms of the shape of businesses, the channels to market and supplier relationships?
• Customers - How can we motivate customers to play their part in tackling climate change willingly to deliver a revolution in green consumption?
• Markets - How can business and government work together to ensure that markets operate effectively in delivering a lower-carbon economy?

Tesco and the SCI are currently talking to other private and public research institutions, NGOs and our suppliers about ways to be involved with the research.

To read more about the work being conducted by the SCI, please visit www.sci.manchester.ac.uk

Progress with partnerships Tesco is a founding member of the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) Supply Chain Collaboration, which will help us understand the carbon footprint created by our suppliers. In October Sir Terry Leahy made the keynote speech at the launch of the 2007 CDP.

Our approach will be to measure our indirect footprint in our supply-chain so that we can identify the carbon-intensive stages and work with suppliers to address them. At our annual supplier conference, Sir Terry Leahy addressed over one thousand suppliers about climate change.

We are working with major producers Coca-Cola and Unilever to find ways of cutting emissions in the supply chain. Partnerships like these will enable us to install Coca-Cola's pioneering natural refrigeration units, achieve distribution efficiencies with Unilever to remove 173,000 lorry miles and achieve packaging reductions across our supply chain of 25% by 2010.

As corporate partners of Forum for the Future for over seven years, we have built a strong relationship working on a broad range of sustainability issues.