Climate and environment

Climate change is now widely acknowledged as one of the most important issues facing society and the National Trust has recognised climate impacts as the biggest risk to its purpose of protecting places of beauty, nature and history for everyone, for ever. The places we care for are being damaged by climate change, the risks are no longer theoretical. This is why we already have plans and resources dedicated to mitigating climate change and the impact it is having, and will continue to have, on the way we work and the buildings and landscapes we protect.

This is our second year of voluntarily aligning our climate disclosures with the framework described by the Taskforce for Financial Climate-related Disclosures (TCFD). We are committed to maturing and enhancing our climate risk disclosures, the detail behind our climate response strategy and the metrics we use to measure our performance over time. This will encompass more detail on our transition plans and key milestones.

Governance – how we make sure climate-related risks are managed

In 2019–20, the Trust’s Executive Board and Trustees recognised the urgent nature of responding to the climate crisis and agreed the establishment of a climate-change programme with a governing Climate Change Board and an Executive Board sponsor – the Director of Land and Nature.

‘Climate Action’, who’s involved:

Programme structure

Reduce, adapt, capture, engage is our climate change RACE: to protect nature, beauty and history, for everyone, for ever.

Click image below to zoom in.

The Climate Change Board regularly reports to the Executive Board and Board of Trustees on progress against our climate change objectives, which are aligned to several different workstreams. We have defined climate action as one of two cross-cutting strategic priorities. The Trust’s central Directorates and regions and countries have a framework in place which ensures the governance of climate issues requiring them to regularly review and report on how climate action fits within their plans.

‘Climate Action’: Cycle of delivery

The figure here describes how we use the ‘plan, do, check, review’ cycle to ensure relevant and ambitious climate objectives are met with actions that are appropriate and effective.

Strategy

Climate change is the most significant risk on the National Trust risk register and is one of two cross-cutting strategic priorities (the other being ‘Everyone Welcome’).

The strategic priority of climate change is made up of four objectives that we describe as our urgent climate RACE (reduce, adapt, capture, engage).

We will reduce our carbon emissions from all of our activities, to be carbon net zero by 2030.

We will aim to be resilient and adaptable to a changing climate in every choice we make.

We will capture more carbon from our land, to be carbon net zero by 2030.

We will engage others - telling our story widely to inspire action from supporters and policymakers.

RACE captures both the transitional and physical risks facing the organisation. Each of these four objectives continues to be translated into work programmes that will be embedded in the Trust’s business and financial plans.

But to ensure their success, we need to grow our organisational capability and confidence around climate change. In 2022–23, we started assessing the competences of our staff to identify where we need to develop. This work will scale up in 2023–24, when we will ensure all our staff and volunteers have access to climate literacy resources and further develop our climate organisational development plan.

Physical risks and opportunities

Physical climate risks are most keenly felt by the Trust in the short-term damage and gradual degradation that extreme weather can cause to buildings and land, and the long-term trends in heat and water availability that will affect biodiversity and the natural assets that are in our care. These require the Trust to set aside financial resources to meet the demands of higher repair costs or the investment needed to adapt.

The Trust views a short-term risk as one which is either immediately present or will have an effect in the next three years – this being the timeframe over which the charity routinely plans and re-plans available resources for near-term conservation projects.

Long-term risks are defined as 40–50 years – this timeframe being used for our climate hazard mapping (see below) and aligning broadly with our definition of long-term sustainability for property funding needs.

The process of mapping and analysing physical climate risks starts with understanding the climate hazards facing our conservation assets and our business processes. This analysis is held in our Climate Hazard map. Working to a high emissions scenario of 4.3 degrees of warming, the map plots Trust places alongside existing data from different sources on climate change-related events, such as landslides and storm damage. An example of the hazard map for storm damage is shown below:

Storm damage 2060

The map is an important tool for our site managers and leadership teams as it will help to identify locations where action needs to be prioritised.

The following are our primary physical climate risks.

Risk	Timeframe	Impact
Over-heating and humidity	Immediate but deepening in the longer term	Site damage and seasonal closure of National Trust properties due to unsafe conditions.
Storm damage	Immediate but deepening in the longer term	Structural damage caused by extreme weather such as high winds, heavy rain or hail.
Flooding	Immediate but deepening in the longer term	Partial or complete submersion of sites due to direct rainfall, or overflow of riverbanks/ground water sources.
Shrink-swell and slope failure	Immediate but deepening in the longer term	Abrupt failure of site foundations due to weakening of underlying rock and soil.
Coastal risk	Medium to long-term	Flooding or collapse of underlying site foundations.
Habitat loss	Medium to long-term	Species loss due to habitats coming under pressure through extreme heat, changes in water availability, food and the proliferation of pests and disease.

Transition risks and opportunities

In 2021–22 we undertook a study that assessed five years of our visitor data and plotted this against future climate scenarios. The results indicated how tourism might be affected by extreme weather such as heat, heavy rain and storms, in the future. In just four years, visiting patterns changed significantly, illustrating the climate transition risks that the Trust faces.

The Trust will need to consider how its places can be adapted as visitor attractions, or whether their use needs to change to conserve them in the long term and balance this with ensuring that the charity is able to continue to deliver public benefit.

Climate transition risk applies to all of our places and operations, key risks include:

Risk	Timeframe	Impact
Failure to adapt our properties to a changing climate	Immediate but deepening in the longer term	Properties conservation funding needs could grow to an unsustainable level in terms of repair requirements.
Failure to adapt our visitor business to more extreme weather	Immediate but deepening in the longer term	The volume and timing of visits to National Trust properties could be difficult to predict or accommodate safely, leading to properties being unavailable for the benefit of the nation.
Failing to de-carbonise our operations and equipment fast enough	Medium term	Technologies used to heat and insulate our places or the equipment used to operate at our sites could become obsolete or difficult and costly to maintain. Support for the charity could reduce if our supporters do not see the Trust acting robustly enough.
Disruption to our operational business due to erratic supplies	Medium to long term	As global weather conditions become more extreme and unpredictable, imported or local sources of supply could be disrupted, leading to an inability to operate certain parts of the Trust’s business.
Conservation and construction standards failing to keep pace with a changing climate	Long term	To maintain compliance and high conservation standards, the Trust could require access to new and improved construction and conservation techniques and methodologies in order to ensure the long-term condition of its places.

We are building on this research, so that we can help indoor and outdoor sites become more resilient and attract the required investment for their long-term conservation.

Arguably, the biggest opportunity for the Trust is through its reach to its members, supporters and policymakers. We are committed to engaging our people in the work we’re doing to create maximum impact. We are working with partners, as a collaborator and advisor, and we are advocating better policies for climate change.

Risk Management

We use our Climate and Environmental Management System (CEMS) to monitor risk.

In 2022–23, for the first time, the whole Trust successfully gained certification to ISO14001 Environmental Management Standard, providing assurance that we are effectively managing our environmental compliance and risk and delivering against our Climate and Environment policy objectives.

Through the property management review process of CEMS, we help teams to understand their climate risk, and to identify improvement actions for reducing carbon and increasing resilience. This year we asked teams to focus on delivering energy reduction actions and ensuring sewage treatment systems and other pollution prevention measures were acting effectively.

The outcomes of CEMS include common risks, systemic non-conformances, environmental incidences, views of stakeholders and our climate and environmental performance. They are reviewed at a regional and national level and help us define our risk management approach to climate change.

Projects pose both an opportunity and a risk to our climate objectives. Done well, our investment in new visitor infrastructure or landscape recovery projects can deliver low- carbon outcomes, in a way that builds in resilience to future climate impacts. In 2022–23, we launched an in-house Sustainable Design Tool. The tool embodies a set of sustainability principles which:

helps design projects that deliver on climate objectives;
allows monitoring of projects against the objectives; and
supports climate-informed solutions.

The tool is now mandatory for medium and large projects and we will report on its effectiveness next year.

Our response to climate risks

We are organising our response into key workstreams:

decarbonising our business;
adapting our places;
managing land for climate; and
engaging our people, supporters and wider society.

De-carbonising our business

Our strategy to decarbonise is reflected in our target to be carbon net zero by 2030, against a 2019–20 baseline. This is made up of two parts:

to reduce our emissions in line with a science-based pathway aligned to 1.5°C,and
to inset any emissions remaining by carbon sequestration through habitats, including woodland, found across National Trust land.

Our full carbon account is published in this report here.

We are investing more in replacing larger fossil-fuel boilers which provide heat to our mansions and other buildings. We also launched Scope 1 and 2 organisational KPIs (described further under the Metrics section), which will be delivered through:

a switch to renewable heat and power; the delivery of energy reduction actions; and
through swapping to electric machinery and kit, primarily in our countryside and garden operations.

Further analysis of our baseline and options to mitigate climate impact is being carried out in the areas of agriculture and land use, procured goods and services, and built let estate. This work will be completed in 2023–24.

Many of the actions required to reduce agricultural emissions and increase the potential

of our land to capture and store carbon will also deliver against our nature ambition to create and restore important UK habitats, alongside other public benefits such as providing accessible spaces for people to enjoy. On the built heritage side, carefully managing the transition of buildings to being efficient, renewably heated and well controlled brings a broad range of benefits to both the people and assets within them.

Heat pumps at Kingston Lacy, Dorset

A new ground-source heat pump has been installed in the 17th-century historic house at Kingston Lacy. The heat pump, which replace two oil boilers using 28,000 litres of oil a year will provide 200 kilowatt hours of heat a year. The project will save over 57 tonnes of carbon a year (equivalent to 1,140 tonnes over a 20-year lifecycle) and prevent the ageing infrastructure being damaged by pollution.

Reducing energy demand at Gallows Hill Farmhouse, Northumberland

Retrofit works were carried out on a vacant residential let property to improve the comfort of the new tenants and reduce its carbon emissions. The EPC rating was improved from an F to a C.

Energy efficiency work included loft insulation, draught proofing, secondary glazing, improved ventilation and low-energy lighting. Most significantly, the oil boiler was replaced with a

a ground-source heat pump from three bore holes and a 4kWp ground- mounted solar array was added. This will reduce carbon emissions by 10.5 tonnes per annum; which equates to a 210-tonne saving over a 20-year heating system lifecycle. As the building is now fossil-fuel free, we expect that the carbon saving will increase as the National Grid further decarbonises towards 2050.

Adapting to climate change

We have been testing a process to help properties understand the hazards they are facing, and how to translate the information into property-specific impact assessments. Our pilot properties have a much clearer understanding of their climate impact priority areas. The next step will be to put an action plan in place to manage with them.

Click diagram to zoom in.

Managing our land for climate

Our strategy requires us to manage our land for nature, climate and people. This means that we need to achieve land use change that delivers carbon-rich habitats, such as woodlands, or restored peatlands, and ensure that climate resilience is built into our land use decisions. The Land and Nature section of this report further details our work in this area.

Our land use change projects must assess how they are impacted by climate hazards such as drought, temperature change or rainfall change to ensure that we are planning for robust land use outcomes.

Engagement on climate change

In November at COP27 we co-hosted an event on heritage and culture alongside the Climate Heritage Network (CHN) where we launched climate adaptation guidance. Developed in partnership with other heritage organisations,

it is designed to help others make decisions in the face of climate change.

We also published adaptation guidance on Water, Archaeology and Landscapes, Buildings and Infrastructure.

We continue to strengthen engagement in our climate RACE. For example, we ran Ranger-led nature walks during Great Big Green Week that helped explain the impact of climate change on nature.

We fed into the Skidmore review of the Government’s net zero target.

We are calling for ambitious targets and investment in nature-based solutions; a strategy for decarbonising historic buildings in a way that respects and conserves heritage, alongside reformed EPC methodology and retrofit delivery to improve building energy efficiency; and an effective sustainable farming and environmental land management system that puts climate mitigation and adaptation at the heart of agriculture.

Our Financial Review sets out how we are engaging to effect positive climate change globally, through the work of our Investment Committee with the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC).

The Green Man climate event

During Great Big Green Week, we
transformed the Fleece Inn, a tenanted
pub in the Cotswolds, into The Green Man,
a space for the local community to come
together to talk about climate change. More than 1,000 people joined us to listen to our climate experts, drink sustainably produced drinks and attend a range of climate-themed events. We will be using the experience to develop our place-based approach to climate engagement.

Metrics and targets

We have set our climate objectives in the context of our climate action RACE (Reduce, Adapt, Capture, Engage). We are resolved to:

work towards carbon net zero as an organisation by 2030;
better understand and respond to the climate adaptation needs of our places, people and assets;
capture more carbon our; and
use stories from our places to inspire our people, supporters and policymakers, to engage with them on what we are doing and to encourage them to take action.

Under these four objectives, we are still developing a full set of metrics and targets. We have launched two new organisational KPIs:

1. a Scope 1 and 2 carbon target, aimed at reducing those emissions within our direct control, such as those from the burning of fossil fuels in our boilers and vehicles; and

2. ensuring our Climate and Environment Management System actions are delivered in a timely manner.

We have developed our carbon account using the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, accounting for emissions in Scope 1, 2 and 3 across our full value chain. Our baseline year for our net zero target is 2019–20. Although we are still refining our methodology, our account has proved an invaluable asset in planning for net zero.

We further developed our internal carbon dashboard to provide our regions and countries, and our properties, with a better view of their Scope 1 and 2 performance against the KPI.

Our Performance

Our carbon performance for the organisation has been as follows since we set our baseline in 2019–20. This year we have revised and refined our measurement bases for each scope of emission and sequestration. This has served to decrease the overall carbon footprint of our operations – most notably Scope 3 emissions in relation to agriculture and employee commuting, and it has seen a reduction in the amount of carbon we estimate to be being emitted from peatland.

The graph below shows the movement in emissions (both gross and net) against this revised baseline. The dash line shows the previous reporting basis for net emissions. The detailed methodologies used in our carbon reporting are set out in the section at the end of this report (including an explanation of the changes from the previous basis).

Overall, our net carbon emissions show a 11.8% reduction on their 2019–20 baseline (this would have been a c19% reduction on the previous reporting basis). Gross emissions have fallen by 8.5% (the equivalent reduction using the original methodology would have been c11%).

Looking more deeply at our carbon account, the key elements of each scope of emission and their reduction pathways are as follows (the detailed methodologies used for our carbon account are given at the end of this section).

We have performed well against our target of a 15% reduction against our 2019–20 baseline in Scope 1 and 2. We achieved a combined 23% reduction resulting from the continuation of our renewable energy programme, switching away from fossil-fuel heating systems, and the deployment of renewable power.

In addition, our focus on delivering energy reduction actions (measured through a separate Climate and Environment Management System [CEMS]) is also having an effect. Finally, our switch to electric countryside and ranger machinery and vehicles is underway so we are seeing a reduction in emissions from petrol and diesel for this purpose.

In Scope 3 (indirect emissions from up and down the value chain), we have reduced emissions by 8.1% against our 2019–20 baseline. We continue to perform strongly in the investments category, which is now at 60% reduced against baseline (more information is provided in the Financial Review). We have also seen reductions in the employee commuting and business travel categories, as we effectively deploy our hybrid working strategy.

Scope 3 emissions will reduce at a slower rate given the dominant effect of emissions from tenanted agricultural estate.

Whilst we continue to develop and improve the data for our Scope 3 emissions, the performance reporting is still hampered by two key constraints (see next page).

Our reporting of tenanted agricultural emissions relies on a static estimate of tenant livestock numbers. Therefore, we are not able to show the carbon benefit of the many projects delivered or underway which reduce these emissions by improving agricultural practices (by restoring nature or establishing trees, for example).
The reporting of emissions associated with the goods and services we procure is still at the basic level, using spend information and generic carbon conversion factors. This year, our investment in projects has increased significantly and this has driven our carbon intensity upwards. We have been working hard with our supply chain to bring about reductions through engagement and careful sourcing. We hope to see the benefits of the Sustainable Design tool for projects referred to above.

Our woodland and peatlands data show improvements. For woodlands, although we have planted more than 1 million trees since our baseline year, the trees are not old enough to be making a material contribution to removing carbon from the atmosphere. The shift in carbon sequestration shown in the data is largely due to an improved understanding of the size of our woodland. Peatland restoration is improving the condition of peatland in some places – this is having a real impact on reducing emissions from that peatland. We are also seeing the benefit of improved knowledge about the size of our peatland.

Waste and recycling

Our Climate and Environment policy, revised in 2021–22 to reflect our climate ambition, also requires us to reduce the amount of general waste we produce, and to reduce mains water use.

Our performance was as follows:

We are working to reduce, year on year the waste that is landfilled – our performance over the last four years is as follows:

The amount of waste produced at sites shows a marked increase over the last two years. This is largely a product of receiving data from more sites through our waster contracts. It is encouraging to see recycling rates continue to improve – in 2022–23 over 34% of our waste was recycled (up by 3 percentage points compared to the previous year) and 84% is now diverted from landfill.

We trialled an improved food waste collection service across 13 properties, which provided us with a more consistent, cost-effective service and the facility to collect waste milk. In order to operate our sewage treatment systems effectively, we have taken the position that milk should not be disposed of in drains and disposal has been challenging. The trial was successful and we are rolling out the service to all cafés.

Water consumption

Water consumption from metered supplies shows an increase of 7% compared to the previous year. Around 25% of this increase can be attributed to increased consumption, with about 57% linked to better data, as we install more meters across our portfolio.

We know that the drought experienced during the spring and summer of 2021–22 is responsible for some of the increase though it is difficult to assign an exact figure as we do not have sub-metering infrastructure for different activities at property. However, we were well prepared for the prolonged dry weather and drought and issued guidance for our properties on how to respond appropriately. We reviewed our response in the autumn and found high levels of conformance whilst identifying a few areas for improvement. This will inform updated guidance.

Our measure of litres consumed per visitor remains below previous years, though this data is indicative only, since not all of our water consumption is visitor related.