Advocacy on climate action

We believe that businesses have a responsibility to advocate for climate action, committing to science-aligned climate policy engagement with the aim of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees in line with the Paris Agreement. We play our part through actively engaging both directly on key policy areas as well as through third parties via association memberships.

As a long-standing member of Climate Group initiatives such as RE100 and EV100, we launched the UK Electric Fleets Coalition in 2020 together with Climate Group and Openreach to advocate for the accelerated transition to electric vehicles in the UK.

Through our membership in the Aldersgate Group, we work with businesses, politicians and civil servants to advocate for policy change that delivers positive environmental development and economic benefits.

In the UK, we have campaigned for energy market reform to boost renewables growth.  We submitted comments to the Government’s review of electricity market arrangements (REMA) consultation, and together with Climate Group and other major UK companies we published Unlocking Corporate Investment in UK Renewables which provides a policy summary on reforms to the Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin (REGO) certification scheme to help deliver grid decarbonisation by 2030. This was alongside commissioning our own insight paper with Cornwall Insight, Reviewing the Future of REGOs for Corporates. Through the We Mean Business Coalition, we support the Fossil to Clean campaign to advocate for speeding up the shift from fossil fuels to clean energy globally.

Collaboration with our sector peers is essential to drive change in our supply chains. That’s why we’re active members of the Joint Alliance for CSR (JAC) and the GSMA Climate Action Taskforce, which drives climate action across the telco industry value chain. We’re also a member of the Responsible Business Alliance (RBA) - the world's largest industry coalition dedicated to responsible business conduct in global supply chains. Alongside these sector initiatives, we’ve also participated in the CDP Supply Chain Programme since its inception which helps us engage with key suppliers through the CDP annual disclosure process.

To drive climate action throughout global supply chains and support SMEs, we were a founding partner of 1.5°C Supply Chain leaders. Together we work with suppliers to halve emissions before 2030 and achieve net zero emissions before 2050. The 1.5°C Supply Chain Leaders was founded by the Exponential Roadmap Initiative together with Ericsson, Inter IKEA Group, Telia Company, BT Group and Unilever, and is supported by the United Nations’ Race to Zero and the We Mean Business Coalition. We support SMEs to take climate action through the SME Climate Hub and the UK Business Climate Hub.

The Digital Connectivity Forum (DCF)  Climate and Sustainability Work Group provides a platform for UK telecoms collaboration, enabling the acceleration of individual and industry pathways towards net zero through collaboration, evidence sourcing, and expert recommendations to Government, regulators, and the industry.

We’re also members of the techUK climate council, which sets the strategic direction on climate issues at techUK, focusing on COP, the sector’s transition to net zero, the role of tech in supporting other sectors in transitioning to net zero, and the sector’s preparedness for future climate change. The council also engages in various policy developments.

Utilising the iconic BT Tower in London, we had the warming stripes, created by Professor Ed Hawkins of the University of Reading in 2018, projected onto it to mark “Show Your Stripes” days to raise awareness about how the climate is changing and the need for urgent action. The warming stripes show the progressive heating of our planet in a visual manner with each stripe representing the average temperature for a single year over the last 170 years.