Welcome

Welcome to our Corporate Social Responsibility Annual Review for 2009.

The year was a challenging one as the UK suffered the effects of the economic recession – but despite this, we made huge progress in a number of areas.

One of the most exciting developments was our progress towards making Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) a realistic option in the fight against global climate change.

This technology could have the potential to capture around 90% of the CO2 produced from burning coal to produce electricity and transport it by pipeline for long-term geological storage under the North Sea.

During the year Longannet Power Station became the first major power station in the UK to capture CO2 from its flue gases, signalling a major step forward in this clean coal technology.

Working closely with Norwegian CO2 removal specialists Aker Clean Carbon, by November 2009 we announced a major breakthrough in reducing the amount of energy required in the carbon capture process, which in turn will reduce the cost.

We have ambitions to make Longannet Power Station a global centre of excellence for Carbon Capture and Storage and aim to develop a commercial scale demonstration plant by 2014.

With several coal power stations the size of Longannet – over 2,000 MW – opening in other parts of the world every week – the results of this work could have a massive impact globally, removing billions of tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere each year and creating engineering jobs in the UK.

Global climate change and making the transition to a low carbon economy, while maintaining energy prices at affordable levels for customers continues to be the most significant CSR issue for ScottishPower and our stakeholders. Our response to this challenge is covered in detail in the Respect for the Environment section of this Review, along with information on other areas of stakeholder concern such as air quality, major projects, biodiversity and resource use.

We are also continuing to invest hundreds of millions of pounds in upgrading our energy networks to support renewable energy developments and improve the security of customers’ supplies.

Energy prices and fuel poverty continued to be the most significant customer issues. During the year we continued to work with Energy Action Scotland, National Energy Action and the Fuel Poverty Advisory Group to help address the issue of affordable warmth.

We spent over £79 million under mandatory government programmes to improve the energy efficiency of customers’ homes, helping many low-income families to reduce their energy consumption in the long term, channelled a further £7 million into social tariffs to help those customers most in need.

During the year we also targeted a further £5 million at projects to help people suffering from fuel poverty through our charity, the ScottishPower Energy People Trust and other community partnerships.

To help all customers get the best value energy deals, we reduced prices in March 2009 and launched several new products, including discounted, fixed and capped price deals, as well as a new internet-based Pay As You Go service.

Safety continues to be a key priority across our business.

During 2009 we reduced the number of Lost Time Accidents across our businesses from 29 to 12.

Process and asset safety are areas in which ScottishPower is investing time, effort and money, to ensure that our management systems are in line with best practice.

We also invested around £3.5 million in our local communities, supporting projects that enhance education and employability, the environment, arts and culture, as well as many hundreds of charities that are close to the hearts of the people who live in the areas where we operate.

We remain committed to doing business responsibly. In this CSR Annual Review and on our CSR TV station you will find details of some of the great initiatives our businesses have been involved in during 2009. I hope you find it interesting. As always, we would welcome your feedback on this year’s Review.

Ann Loughrey
Head of CSR