Northern Powergrid parent company pledges climate action

Northern Powergrid parent company Berkshire Hathaway Energy has become one of 13 US big businesses to pledge to help mitigate dangerous climate change.

The ‘American business act on climate pledge’ is a US government initiative which has been set out ahead of the climate change conference in Paris in December this year. By signing the commitment, the companies pledge to reduce their carbon emissions, increase low-carbon investments, deploy more clean energy and take any other action to tackle climate change.

The announcements total at least $140 billion (£90 billion) in new low-carbon investment and more than 16GW of new renewable energy in the US.

Northern Powergrid has voiced its support for Berkshire Hathaway Energy’s pledge and reaffirmed its commitment to reduce its carbon footprint through the new RIIO-ED1 regulatory period by 10 percent by 2023.

A spokesperson for the distribution network operator told Utility Week: “Northern Powergrid is a Berkshire Hathaway Energy business and supports the group’s pursuit of carbon reduction through its environmental respect priorities.”

Director of safety, health and environment Geoff Earl added: “We have several initiatives in place to achieve this including the installation of telematics on our fleet vehicles and fitting of humidistats at all of our major substations to control both temperature and humidity,” he said. “We’ll be exploring the use of a ‘greener’ fleet and the use of renewable energy at our depots.”

As part of its ‘environmental respect’ priorities, Berkshire Hathaway Energy subsidiaries, including Northern Powergrid, are helping protect the environment through actions such as: investing $15 billion (£9 billion) in wind and solar generation; investing in new electricity transmission and distribution equipment to improve reliability; and offering programmes which encourage customers to conserve and manage their energy use.