UK, February 28. Our Defence division’s primary focus has always been to serve our customers by innovating and delivering power and propulsion solutions to protect society. However, over the past decades, the global impact of climate change has become more obvious and as providers of advanced power solutions, we must consider the impact of our actions on the environment and help our customers to meet the challenges they face.
A Sustainability Strategy Fit for the Future
As leaders of technical innovation, we believe we can make a difference. That’s why, in recent years, we have begun striving for sustainability in all that we do at Rolls-Royce, inspiring future innovation to help protect the years that will follow. Ensuring we have a robust sustainability strategy embedded in our business is critical to our success.
Our aim is for Sustainability to become business-as-usual in the way we work, much the same as we currently consider cost and safety implications when making decisions.
Supporting Our Customers’ Ambitions
Rolls-Royce Defence has recently appointed Andrew Eady, to lead Sustainability across the business, and this role includes a particular focus on next generation capability developments associated with the UK’s Tempest programme and the wider Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP).
Andrew explains, “The UK MOD have been terrific first movers in defining a world first Defence Climate Change and Sustainability Directorate, publishing their Climate Change and Sustainability Strategic Approach (CCSSA) in 2020. This outlines the role Defence can play in supporting the UK Government’s Net Zero 2050 legally binding target (the MOD represent approximately 50% of UK Gov emissions). Even more impressive, the RAF have an ambitious Net Zero 2040 target. This certainly puts a driving requirement into industry to understand how it can play its part in supporting this ambition.”
Sustainability – much more than just decarbonisation.
As sustainability in the Defence sector can take many forms, Andrew will be exploring many options; from reducing carbon emissions and energy consumption, to incorporating environmentally-friendly materials and processes in our operations. By taking a strong lead in our social responsibilities via the implementation of sustainable practices, not only will our environmental impact reduce, we will also achieve considerable cost savings and operational efficiency improvements.
Building Energy Resilience
Providing our customers with energy resilience is critical to sustaining missions. Defence operators can improve their energy resilience by implementing energy-efficient systems, using renewable energy sources, and developing energy storage capabilities. This can reduce dependence on fossil fuels and improve the ability to withstand power outages or disruptions.
Andrew explains there are various opportunities where we can help improve energy and supply chain resilience; “Imagine a future where our customers are able to produce their own synthetic fuel supply (literally using carbon captured from the air, and hydrogen generated from water). Our customers will become resilient to fuel market supply shocks, and drastically reduce their logistics’ footprint. Naturally, this is good for the customer, and better for the environment. We are actively pioneering technologies to make this Sci-Fi concept a reality.
“Supply Chain Resilience is equally important. Defence operators can improve supply chain resilience by diversifying suppliers, implementing sustainable sourcing practices, and reducing the environmental impact of transportation. This can reduce the risk of supply chain disruptions and improve the ability to respond to emergencies.
“As an example, in times of crisis such as we have experienced with the COVID-19 pandemic, access to rare earth minerals and materials in batteries can be challenged. To maintain access to these materials and continue to operate unhindered in an increasingly electronic world, we need to embrace circular economy principles into our designs from day one. This includes themes such as design for disassembly – ensuring we have a better ability to access, recycle and repurpose materials through life, and ultimately reduce our exposure to future volatile supply chain risks.
“We also need to ensure that we are resilient to the effects of increased extreme weather events in the face of a climate changed world; a world that the future Tempest platform is likely to operate in. This covers themes such as weather events disrupting the supply chain, damaging infrastructure, and influencing the availability of materials, through to ensuring our products are able to maintain performance over their operating life (for example in higher ambient global temperatures).”
