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We’re committed to helping our clients and their drivers to reduce their carbon footprint by promoting alternative-fuelled vehicles, particularly 100% electric cars and vans.

JON WILLESCROFT CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER, G4S

That it is still on track is thanks in no small part to LeasePlan, which has worked with G4S on creative ways to skirt supply challenges. Chief among them is LeasePlan’s strategy of buying available hybrid and allelectric vehicle stock, leasing them to G4S on short-term contracts of between three and nine months.

“More than three-quarters of the new cars we ordered last year were low- emission vehicles,” says Willescroft. “This is around 450 vehicles and is a really big step up from where we were before. This alone removes over 1,000 tonnes of carbon from the environment.”

Willescroft himself moved to a leased electric vehicle while he was waiting for his Tesla company car. “By 2025, we want 40% of our passenger cars to have zero carbon emissions, and all of them by 2030.”

By 2040, G4S wants its entire UK fleet to be zero carbon – this target could prove to be the most technically challenging, because the remainder of the fleet will be its heavy armoured vehicles, which are used for cash protection.

“Cars are becoming easier with regards to the net-zero journey,” says Willescroft, “but heavy vehicles are harder to electrify because the technology just isn’t there at the moment to give you the battery range.

“The expectation is that, over the next five-to-ten years, we'll see continuing advancements around battery range, which will allow us to invest more in the electrification of our heavier vehicles. But we’re absolutely fixed on achieving these targets.”

On that note, he adds that G4S UK&I has a number of trials ongoing with some of its smaller cash vehicles – mostly Transit vans that have been fully electrified. “We're kind of testing and learning as we go on that,” he says.

As with any change, taking people along with you is vitally important, and Willescroft says LeasePlan has helped here, too, ensuring that G4S people transitioning to EV and hybrid cars have all the support they need.

“That’s been really important, both in terms of the speed of migrating to low-emission vehicles, but also people getting excited by it and being able to create a narrative around successes. We want to create passion around the change, because passion is what makes for change ambassadors, who can help with making the transition process as quick and painless as possible.”

In terms of collaborating with an ecosystem of businesses to meet its sustainability targets, Willescroft says: “You need partners who are flexible and understand your business, trying to problemsolve and help you achieve your outcomes, as opposed to a one-size-fixes-all offering.”

G4S is making greater headway on fleet decarbonisation in the UK&I than it is in any other territory, although similar programmes are underway in the Netherlands, Denmark, and Belgium. But he also says that, in the UK&I, there is “greater customer expectation around sustainability than in many other markets”.

Other factors that are currently limiting progress on EVs in some territories are a lack of charging infrastructure alongside the many governments not yet incentivising businesses to embrace sustainability in the same way as in the UK&I, where there are tax breaks around EV initiatives. Plus, according to Willescroft, in some countries such as South Africa, coal is still being burned to create the electricity needed for EVs.

“In which case, you're not really achieving much by electrifying your fleet,” he points out. “There's an awful lot of factors that make fleet decarbonisation complicated, and there’s no doubt the easier markets right now are the UK&I and Europe.”

“We've got a really clear fleet strategy in UK&I,” he says. “It's been approved across the region and it's also something our customers really care about. It's the right thing to do as a business; it's the responsible thing, and customers want us to do it.”

He adds that legislation around sustainability is also getting stronger all the time. “You won't be able to buy a new diesel or petrol vehicle after 2030 in the UK, so it's a perfect storm of reasons to do it anyway.”

Yet, despite this, Willescroft admits that rampant fuel inflation across all markets and a year-on-year increase in the cost of vehicles “have produced a tension between cost and the speed at which we can roll out our net-zero strategy in the UK”.

As well as government tax incentives, the company is striving to get as close to cost-neutral as possible. “We buy a lot of vehicles, so we leverage this with OEMs and manufacturers,” says Willescroft. “We also make sure we’re looking at the total cost of ownership of vehicles, rather than just the lease price.

“This helps us be more creative in terms of what we can provide but, ultimately, however you cut it, there'll be a net increase in fleet costs. You can't really escape that.”

Although squarely focused right now on the UK&I, Willescroft and his team are acutely mindful of G4S’s global net-zero targets, which is why it has relationships with companies similar to LeasePlan across its territories.

“We've got partners in each market that we'll look to lean on in the same way when the time comes,” he explains. “We'll look to leverage our experience in the UK, so we're not recreating it each time we're using the playbook.”

On the broader question of sustainability Willescroft says he has “strong, top-down sponsorship from the board, whether it be net-zero, diversity, or human-rights risks - sustainabilityustainability is about far more than net-zero.”

With sustainability and ESG initiatives, Willescroft says embedding is key. “How do we do that? By making sure that, at a functional level, ESG and sustainability are a core part of how we are measured and how our objectives are measured. This way, everything flows all the way down to individual objectives.”

“Over the coming year, everyone has targeted individual measures that are not only around commercial delivery, but are also really clear on ESG and sustainability objectives. This means sustainability topics are standing-agenda items every time we engage with the business. Every time we sit down and review performance with the business units or talk about sourcing, deals, or supply management performance, then sustainability is a core part of that.”

Only by constantly talking about sustainability and ESG does Willescroft believe you can fully embed them into a business.