5. Our plan for the future

Our Plan - Realising our ambition

• Our People - We want our people and those across the sport sector to be carbon aware and able to take informed decisions with environmental sustainability in mind.
• Our Partners - We want to work with partners to support the sector in reducing its carbon impact, extending decarbonisation and environmental sustainability beyond our organisational boundary.
• Our Procurement  - We want to embed environmental sustainability and decarbonisation into our procurement process and work with suppliers to understand and reduce the carbon impact of our purchases.
• Our Processes - We want to ensure that our processes actively encourage decarbonisation and effectively balance short and long-term objectives.  This includes policies, procedures, investments and business cases.
• Our Places - We want to lead the way in maximising opportunities to operate our national centres in the most sustainable way, delivering low carbon activities as well as protecting and enhancing biodiversity.

Our People

We want our people and those across the sport sector to be carbon aware and able to take informed decisions with environmental sustainability in mind.

Our net zero 2030 commitments

• We will continue to include training on environmental matters, biodiversity, energy efficiency and sustainable practices for all staff in understandable and relatable language
• We will assess how we can adopt the principles of Llwybr Newydd (the Wales Transport Strategy 2021) as well as the opportunities of local Healthy Travel Charters to ensure that our staff are able to commute to work in the most sustainable manner
• We will maximise the benefits of hybrid working, reducing non-essential travel to work
• We will promote and offer a cycle to work scheme and mileage payments for journeys by bike to all staff, to encourage active travel and public transport when commuting into Sport Wales premises
• We will carry out a staff travel survey to understand the forms of transport staff use to commute to work, and look to increase active travel and public transport
• We will review individual environmental impacts at work and help staff to track their personal carbon impact, celebrating low carbon lifestyles and encouraging constant and active behaviour change
• We will identify, facilitate and signpost learning opportunities for the wider sector.

Our Partners

We want to work with partners to support the sector in reducing its carbon impact, extending decarbonisation and environmental sustainability beyond our organisational boundary.  

Our net zero 2030 commitments

• We will develop guidance resources and signposting for our partners to support them all the way through their decarbonisation and environmental sustainability journeys
• We will work with key partners including National Governing Bodies, national partners, local authorities and sport partnerships to share examples of best practice and drive improvements in carbon emissions in the sporting arena
• We will incorporate sustainability requirements in our partner investment processes
• We will support sport clubs as they look to decarbonise their organisations by building on the work of the Be Active Wales Fund to include specific environmental requirements and grant conditions, and promote low carbon equipment and renewable energy sources such as solar panels and heat pumps to our grant recipients

Our Procurement

We want to embed environmental sustainability and decarbonisation into our procurement process and work with suppliers to understand and reduce the carbon impact of our purchases.  

Our net zero 2030 commitments

• We will introduce an internal framework for sustainable procurement, including a minimum standard of sustainability and energy efficiency for procured goods in parallel with our commitment to enhance social partnership working and deliver socially responsible public procurement under the Social Partnership and Public Procurement (Wales) Bill
• We will work with suppliers stating our commitment to reducing our own footprint and phase in requirements for our suppliers to address their carbon footprints, to a level that is within their means
• We will work directly with our larger suppliers in the food and construction sectors, to understand and encourage their decarbonisation progress, and assign expectations of them

Our Places

We want to lead the way in maximising opportunities to operate our national centres in the most sustainable way.  

Our net zero 2030 commitments

• We will work to decarbonise our buildings, with a focus on increasing on-site renewable energy generation and decarbonising heating
• We will continue to phase out fossil fuels in our fleet, replacing all fleet vehicles at the end of their lives with fully electric vehicles and consider other emerging opportunities such as hydrogen vehicles
• We will explore opportunities to support carbon offsetting projects on our own sites
• We will investigate ways of working that are less building specific and include sharing office space with other organisations
• We will maintain and enhance biodiversity at each of our sites including extending existing wildflower areas to encourage bees and butterflies, maintaining trees in accordance with Tree Protection Orders and using bird boxes around our sites to attract native species
• We will continue to reduce the use of herbicides to maintain our on-site pitch facility
• We will maintain the onsite borehole at the Sport Wales National Centre as a means of collecting water for re-use across our facilities
• We will work with the commissioned partner at Plas Menai to ensure that activities delivered at the site support biodiversity and that water quality is maintained

Our processes

We want to ensure that our processes actively encourage environmental sustainability and effectively balance short and long-term objectives.  This includes policies, procedures, investments and business cases.  

Our net zero 2030 commitments

• We will report our carbon emissions annually to Welsh Government through the Welsh Public Sector net zero carbon reporting process.  We will review the results and identify key areas of focus on an annual basis. 
• We will provide staff with the tools and information they need to make environmentally conscious decisions in all Sport Wales business actions (such as benchmarks of different products/actions in terms of CO2 emissions)
• We will consider our approach to meetings with internal and external colleagues, using virtual meetings where appropriate.
• We will continue to highlight and raise awareness of our own low carbon projects, and promote case studies of sports clubs working to decarbonise their operations, through our website and other communication channels