The environment

Managing our environmental impacts

Our statement

“While we are a low-impact company, we understand thatwe have a responsibility to reduce the impact of our operations on the environment. We are committed to joining the fight against climate change – by measuring the footprint of our business, looking at energy consumption, travel, waste and the impact of our customer premise equipment, we have identified specific actions that we can take to improve the efficiency of our networks, minimize our energy consumption and ensure that we use resources efficiently. We are now working to define company-wide CO₂ reduction targets, with clear goals for each operating company to achieve within a given time. Our guiding principal is to move our business towards a more sustainable future – that’s good for the environment, and it’s good for our bottom line as well.”
Rick Westerman, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications, Liberty Global - Champion for the Environment

Why it matters

As the largest international cable operator, Liberty Global has a responsibility to understand and reduce the impact of the Company’s operations on the environment and to help our customers and employees to do the same. Although our environmental impact may be less significant than that of other sectors, we still use considerable amounts of energy each day and are committed to reducing the greenhouse gases that we produce.

Thus, we are tackling climate change in two ways. First, we recognize the need to reduce our energy consumption by improving the energy efficiency of our networks and offices, as this is the area where we have the biggest environmental impact. Second, we understand that our products have an environmental impact and we are also looking to improve the energy efficiency of the products and services we provide.

What we are doing

Our main environmental objective is to reduce our carbon footprint by improving the efficiency of our business. To this end, we have launched the Liberty Global Climate Challenge, a Company-wide program that identifies where improvements can be made across our business.

The Liberty Global Climate Challenge includes a number of phases and activities. The first phase measured the carbon footprint of our European affiliates and corporate offices. Based on our foot-printing exercise, we put programs in place to improve the energy efficiencies of our networks and facilities. We are also looking into alternative forms of energy to power parts of our networks such as wind farms and solar panels, as well as the purchasing of renewable energy. Our Climate Challenge program is also dedicated to raising employee awareness of ways to reduce their carbon footprints both in the workplace and at home.

We’re also looking at how we can improve the efficiency of the products and services we offer. In 2009, UPC Broadband announced the next generation of energy saving set-top boxes. These ‘green’ set-top boxes have been designed to use less than 1W in stand-by mode and consume an average of 5.5W.