Our approach to decarbonising our business

The Crown Estate is committed to playing a leading role in the UK's transition to a net zero, energy secure and climate resilient future. Our role is to contribute towards national energy and climate goals whilst also decarbonising our own business operations.

As the impacts from changing weather patterns become increasingly clear, we are accelerating our efforts to decarbonise our own business operations whilst expanding the scope of this work by going further with customers and suppliers to cut carbon from our wider value chain and making our portfolio more climate resilient.

Decarbonising commitments and plans by sector

We’ve committed to aligning our activities to a 1.5-degree warming trajectory and have developed a full carbon baseline for our organisation to help us drive progress. This work revealed 60% of our carbon emissions originate in our marine business, 24% in our Windsor and rural portfolio, 15% in urban and built environment activities and 1% in our corporate business operations.

When considering Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions (meaning our direct emissions and the indirect emissions of our wider value chain), the baseline shows our largest source of emissions is the construction of marine renewable energy infrastructure, followed by land use driven by agricultural activity. These include activities from leaseholders and suppliers not directly in our control but where we can seek to influence. Most of our direct emissions occur in urban and built environment activities where we have the greatest control to effect change.

Given the diversity of our assets, we have developed science-led net zero trajectories and decarbonisation plans for the sectors in which we operate covering emissions from buildings, land use, renewable energy generation, mineral aggregates and all other activities. Collectively they are designed to cut our emissions by 42% against baseline by 2030, and 90% by 2050. We plan to use high-quality carbon removals for the remaining 10% of emissions and we are investigating options linked to our portfolio to develop these.

Decarbonisation progress so far

Whilst this work has been ongoing, our priority has been to make improvements across our real estate where we have most control.

Using data we have been reducing energy usage, deploying a team of engineers to implement quick fixes and develop longer-term plans for cutting emissions. We’ve set ambitious energy reduction targets for the last two years. Between 2022 and 2024 we achieved a cumulative reduction of 15% (exceeding a target of 10%). We are also acting to retrofit historic buildings to make them more energy-efficient, as well as delivering low-carbon construction projects. Find the case study below.

To help us to understand our Scope 3 emissions (from suppliers and customers), which make up 97% of our overall carbon footprint, we ran a successful pilot to gather data on supplier emissions. Longer term, this will help us drive decarbonisation in sectors where we have relatively low direct emissions but high potential for influence.

Science-led and transparent

Everything we do is rooted in data and evidence and our approach will continue to evolve as the guidance changes. We have robust governance in place to oversee this work, including linking remuneration to our net zero performance, and will report on our progress using best practice guidance such as the GHG Protocol, the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD) and the UK’s Transition Plan Taskforce. We are also engaging with external partners and will share our learnings across the sectors in which we operate.

Resilience & adaptation

We are mindful of the need to adapt to climate impacts; fully assessing the scale and nature of risk and responding accordingly. This means investing in the natural environment and building resilience in urban areas through the design of buildings and public spaces and  including more nature-based solutions.

These activities are closely linked with our work on nature recovery. For example, adding more nature-rich green and blue space to public spaces in London and working with rural farmers to plant new hedgerows and woodland. This will help us to adapt to changing weather, from temperature rises to flooding and drought. Protecting and restoring nature also improves ecosystems' ability to absorb carbon.

Next Steps

We will continue to drive ongoing decarbonisation programmes across our business and use our influence to drive progress in the sectors where we operate.

The scale of the challenge has required us to increase our ambition, to extend our influence in partnership with suppliers, customers, partners and communities, and to deliver innovation solutions. We will publish more details on our approach later in 2025, including all sector trajectories and associated commitments.

For more information on how we are supporting the Net Zero transition click here: Supporting the net zero transition