UK-based communications services provider BT Group has appointed Niall Dunne as chief sustainability officer (CSO) to lead the company’s worldwide climate change and sustainable development strategy. Niall Dunne, from Glenageary in Dublin, will co-ordinate all sustainability activities across BT, ensuring sustainability practices are embedded into BT’s strategy, products and services.
Niall Dunne, who will join BT on 4 July, has spent the past decade leading sustainability practices in Saatchi & Saatchi and Accenture and has chaired a number of industry initiatives, including the Sustainable Consumption Project Board for the World Economic Forum in 2009.
BT Group has been a pioneer in sustainability and corporate responsibility: it maintains a gold status in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and ‘Platinum Plus’ level in the Business in the Community Corporate Responsibility Index. Last financial year, BT invested £27.6 million, in cash, time and in-kind support, to projects that directly benefitted society including close to £1 million in Ireland.
As one of the UK’s top 10 largest energy consumers, BT is committed to reducing its carbon footprint and is already one of the UK’s largest consumers of low carbon energy. BT has a target to cut the carbon intensity of its global business by 80% from 1997 levels by 2012. To help achieve this, BT aims to generate 25% of its UK energy needs from renewable energy sources by 2016, this includes building its own wind farms.
Niall Dunne says: “We live in a world where data is becoming the new oil. Globally people are networked and consuming information like never before. As a sustainability leader BT has a fantastic opportunity to work with its customers, and within the information communication technology sector, to ensure that it provides products and services that don’t just minimise environmental impact, but allow people to make smarter more informed decisions, enabling us to once again live in an enlightened state within our environment.”
As one of the UK’s top 10 largest energy consumers, BT is committed to reducing its carbon footprint and is already one of the UK’s largest consumers of low carbon energy. BT has a target to cut the carbon intensity of its global business by 80% from 1997 levels by 2012. To help achieve this, BT aims to generate 25% of its UK energy needs from renewable energy sources by 2016, this includes building its own wind farms.