Award winning Energy Team at An Post
An Post is Ireland's national postal operator and it has over 9,000 employees across the country.
Its Sustainability Team consists of six members who report into the Chief Transformation Officer. The team is deeply embedded in all functions of the organisation and collaborate with other departments to drive and deliver on sustainable projects across the company such as procuring sustainable products, upgrading the property portfolio, and decarbonising its fleet.
The project
An Post's sustainability efforts are an ongoing project. The team conducts internal ISO 14001 and ISO 50001 audits in their circa 160 sites, which maintains standards throughout the organisation.
They monitor the utility consumption using smart management systems and work closely with site managers to help to adjust heating and electrical requirements on an individual site basis.
The team reports on progress in meeting targets in the Annual Sustainability Report. Through these ongoing actions, An Post is achieving annual carbon reductions and remains committed to the ambitious target of "Net zero carbon emissions from our own operations by 2030".
Property
As An Post has over two million square feet under management in its property portfolio, the transition to sustainable living is at the core of the decarbonisation strategy, and represents one of the biggest projects for the Sustainability Team.
The team is leading the 'Concept Properties' programme which aims to champion innovative technologies to reduce the organisation's environmental footprint and to ultimately retrofit its property portfolio to a minimum of BER B3.
Transport
An Post maintains one of the largest electric fleets in Ireland with over 1,000 EVs, and three 7.5 tonne electric trucks and the largest private charging network in Ireland with circa 1,300 chargers.
The Team supports the An Post transport department in their monitoring of fuel consumption, distance travelled and electric vehicle management which has resulted in 8,581,519 fewer kilometres travelled and 846,240 litres of fuel saved in 2022 compared to 2021.
Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGVs) pose the largest decarbonisation challenge. To address this, the Team have been engaging with leading European truck manufacturers to investigate new technologies, such as hydrogen or electric trucks with longer ranging batteries. As an interim solution and following the success of An Post's Hydro-treated Vegetable Oil (HVO) trial as a fuel for five HGVs in Galway in 2021, the Team expanded the initiative in 2022 to an additional 12 HGVs within their Cork fleet.
Results
Some of the key achievements of the team include:
- They reduced their overall energy usage by 12,795,406 kWh in 2022 through smart management and the procurement of more sustainable services. This represents a reduction of 9.5% year-on-year and a 10.8% reduction from their pre-pandemic levels in 2019.
- The replacement of all external and internal lighting in all offices with energy efficient lighting, which has contributed to a reduction in their electricity usage by over 1 million kWh since 2019.
- In 2022, they maintained zero emission deliveries in all major cities and now have over 30% of the fleet running on alternative fuel sources.
- Installing public access fast chargers at two of their sites. Since their installation, the fast chargers have provided the public with 3,370 kWh of green electricity to power their cars.
- An Post was named as Ireland's most reputable organisation in 2022 by RepTrak.
What's next?
The An Post Sustainability Team will continue to work towards its target of net zero emissions from its own operations by 2030.
See all winners from SEAI Energy Awards 2023