Environmental facts and figures

Customer enquiries 2010-11

Calls to NIE’s customer helpline indicate that we received 379 customer enquiries with environment related aspects in the 12 months to 31 March 2011. To provide a meaningful comparison enquiries from this period have been plotted against each of the previous 6 years.

Bird fouling continues to be the biggest cause of environmental customer concern. In 2010/11 bird fouling, bird collisions and Electro Magnetic Field (EMF) enquiries generated two or more complaints each per month. These environmental impacts have been rated accordingly in the ISO14001 'Environmental Impacts Matrix'.

Energy 2010 - 11

We closely monitor the total electricity and gas consumption in each of our locations. Each site is compared, on a monthly or quarterly basis, to the same period from the previous year. A traffic light indicator displays sites that have:

• GREEN : a reduction of 5% or greater of the previous period’s total
• AMBER: achieved + or – 5% of previous period’s total
• RED: a greater than 5% increase of the previous period’s total

These totals are provided to each site landlord, allowing their immediate visibility of their site’s consumption, trends that are emerging, and comparison with other locations.

Our total energy consumption rose by 312, 262kWh in this period, representing an increase of 6% compared to the preceding period. This is the first time that energy consumption per employee has increased following 5 consecutive years of falling. Difficulties in sustaining our high level of performance and the exceptionally cold November and December weather have contributed to this increase.

Transport 2010-11

We have substantially resized our vehicle fleet, to achieve greater efficiency in fuel consumption and vehicle degradation. To augment this changeover the introduction of our “Fleetstar” tracking system allows us to monitor the movements of every vehicle within the fleet in real time. This allows us to calculate actual running times, accurate mileage recording, prolonged idle times, etc. This system became operational for the complete fleet in January 2009.

Total fuel usage is collated centrally, based on information provided by our contracted fuel suppliers from garage forecourts throughout the country. Combining the information from Fleetstar with our forecourt consumption figures allows us to accurately calculate our miles per litre consumption.

A very large proportion of our mileage is reactionary, as we are obligated under our licensing agreement to respond to faults and to provide connections to the network for customers. Consequently, fuel consumption in miles per litre provides a more appropriate measure than simply providing total litres consumed.

In 2010/11 our vehicle fleet consumed 1.41 million litres of fuel to travel 6.8 million miles, resulting in a reduction in fuel consumption of 5.03% to achieve an increase in distance of 1.92% when compared to 2009/10. This represents an average consumption of 4.82 miles per litre, up from 4.48 miles per litre in 2009/10 and 4.16 miles per litre for the final quarter of 2008/9.

Waste Management 2010-11

All material wastes produced by us are grouped into Controlled waste, Hazardous waste or Excavation waste categories. Hazardous waste is comprised of oil returned for recycling and the disposal of generated waste such as oily rags, resins, creosote impregnated wood and other harmful substances. All other non harmful and inert wastes are controlled wastes.

Where an opportunity exists for us to introduce a recycling process, i.e. all waste streams except excavation waste, we achieved a recycling total of 80%.

Our total waste disposal decreased from 24,435T in 2009/10 to 19,278T in this period.

Our excavation totals are determined by work volumes that are dictated by customer driven work and network maintenance requirements – for example repairing or installing an underground cable. We are obliged to fulfil these work demands under our licensing agreements; however, they must be achieved within the confines of current planning and regulatory restrictions.

The requirements of statutory bodies responsible for road management render almost all excavated materials as a waste product which has to be sent to landfill.