Student accommodation developer announces £30m net zero strategy

Unite Students, the UK’s leading owner, manager and developer of student accommodation, has published its net zero carbon pathway, to be delivered by 2030.

The pathway includes targets for carbon reduction, which have been formally validated by the Science Based Targets initiative.

The group has already invested over £30m in energy efficiency since 2014 and has identified a further £100m of additional opportunities for capital investment to achieve its carbon reduction targets.

This represents an annual investment of around £10m in energy initiatives going forward. These initiatives will also deliver an “attractive financial return” through a payback period of less than ten years from savings in utility costs.

Richard Smith, chief executive of Unite Students, commented: “Taking bold and decisive action to reduce environmental impact makes good business sense, as well as being the right thing to do.

“We believe that our 2030 net zero carbon ambition, built on science based targets validated by the SBTi, will help us play our part in tackling climate change for the benefit of generations to come.

We will achieve net zero by changing how we design and develop new buildings to cut embodied carbon, investing in existing buildings to make them as energy efficient as possible, and buying renewable energy in a way that directly supports the creation of a new green power generation.“