initiatives
The fleet industry is already doing its bit to reduce its impact on
the environment, but needs extra help and support to have a more
serious impact claims Lex,
the UK’s largest contract hire company.
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Lex believes companies could implement cost-effective
environmental strategies by working with their contract hire
provider, manufacturer or fuel card partner when considering how to
go that extra ‘green’ mile.
“Government legislation has made a positive impact on reducing
emissions across the fleet industry as key items such as Vehicle
Excise Duty (VED) and Benefit in Kind taxation are all CO2 based,”
explained managing director, Jon
Walden.
Walden also noted that higher taxes on private fuel benefits has
reduced the propensity of employees to take the benefit and instead
focused them on lowering fuel costs and improving fuel
efficiency.
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By GlobalDataLex achieved ISO 14001 certification in the late 1990s. ISO
14001 is an internationally accepted specification for an
environmental management system, which provides a framework for
specifying, implementing and assessing environmental controls.
“We would never recommend adding to a company’s administrative
burden unnecessarily, but ISO14001 is a useful way of measuring
where you are, where you would like to be and generally getting the
whole company behind going green,” said Walden.
“Company cars can play a major part in this process and you can
start to look at annual emissions, number of journeys made and even
[offering incentives to] drivers to opt for smaller, more fuel and
tax efficient cars.”
The Lex Momentum consultancy team has also proved that companies
which take CO2 emissions seriously when building their company car
choice list can dramatically reduce fuel costs. Lex identified
annual fuel cost savings of £16,000 on a customer’s fleet of 95
cars with an annual fuel spend of £322,000. This was possible by
introducing initiatives to reduce the fleet’s average CO2 emission
rating by just one tax band.
Reducing average CO2 emissions yields benefits to both the
employee and employer. The employee benefits from reduced
company car tax and fuel costs while the company benefits from
lower fuel costs, VED and Class 1A National Insurance Contributions
(NIC). The impact of reducing the average tax band on the
same customer’s fleet by one level will reduce its annual NIC bill
by 5 per cent.
Lex carried out its own survey in January into company car
priorities for 2007 and found that having a greener fleet ranked
third in a list of 10 issues, behind health and safety, and vehicle
running costs.
ALD fleet operator survey
Not much has changed since January, as a similar survey revealed
recently. ALD
Automotive, the operational leasing and fleet management arm of
the Société Générale Group, reported that cutting operating costs
and reducing health and safety risk dominated the workload of fleet
decision-makers.
Of the more-than 100 respondents to ALD’s online survey, 41 per
cent said “reducing cost” was their single most important objective
while 21 per cent listed it as their second key objective.
Meanwhile, 38 per cent of survey respondents said “reducing
business risk (duty of care)” was their most important fleet
objective with a further 25 per cent rating managing occupational
road risk as second on their list of fleet priorities.
With the recent rise in fuel prices to record levels, 82 per
cent of fleet decision-makers highlighted reducing petrol and
diesel costs as a priority within overall cost control. Notably, 81
per cent of respondents said they wanted to focus on encouraging
employees to adopt eco-driving techniques to help meet a triple
objective of reducing cost, safety and cutting environmental
damage.
Still, reducing environmental impact appeared to be incidental
to the main objective of lowering cost. “It is clear that
environmental matters and reducing their employer’s carbon
footprint is on the radar of fleet operators. However, they see
‘green’ issues under both ‘cost control’ and ‘safety’ and not
simply in relation to widespread concerns surrounding climate
change,” commented ALD marketing director, David
Yates.
