Britishvolt – SustainabilityCambois, Northumberland

Britishvolt are on track to deliver the UK’s first lithium-ion battery cell Gigaplant. The Facility will be located at the former coal stocking yard, Cambois and will be one of the largest manufacturing plants in the whole of Europe.

The Gigaplant will attract around £2.6bn total investment and will provide approximately 2,900 highly skilled jobs. The Gigaplant is strategically important to the UK automotive industry and a key component in the drive to the UK achieving Net Zero by 2050. The Gigaplant is set to be Phase One operational by the end of 2023.

Sustainability is at the heart of Britishvolt plans in terms of delivering their corporate philosophy and Environmental Social Governance (ESG) agenda.

To deliver their ESG and sustainability vision, Ridge has been working with Britishvolt to develop a bespoke framework model, reflecting Britishvolt’s corporate and stakeholder ambitions and designed to deliver highly ambitious sustainability credentials for the Gigaplant development.

Adopting a bespoke framework approach
Britishvolt’s responsible business commitment is underpinned by framework developed to highlight corporate commitments along with the requirements of funders and key stakeholders, including the local communities where they operate.

The bespoke framework is structured around 10 sustainability themes and a set of key principles highlighting Britishvolt’s responsible business

agenda. The principles have been defined to be applicable to any Britishvolt activity.

Underpinning the principles is a set of 88 key ‘questions’ designed to demonstrate impact at a project level.

For each question, three levels of performance have been defined, with associated performance indicators. These are:

Compliance: representing the minimum level required to meet relevant policy requirements and / or recognised industry guidance.
Best Practice: representing current best practice in sustainability
Aspirational: representing leading edge sustainability and requiring innovative solutions

10

Sustainability themes
2,900

Highly skilled jobs created

The Ridge team has been professional and diligent throughout, acting as consultant in helping us to develop our bespoke sustainability and ESG model for the UK’s first lithium-ion Gigaplant facility. We have worked with the Ridge experts to align the corporate and stakeholder framework to deliver our highly ambitious ESG and sustainability credentials. Ridge have gone above and beyond our expectations, as such we would wholeheartedly recommend their multidiscipline team.

Britsihvolt

Framework development and support
Ridge have worked closely with Britishvolt and the project team to design and implement the framework and to set levels of ambition. Ridge have also supported Britishvolt in delivering the framework ambitions and communicating requirements to a range of stakeholders, including project funders and the local supplier base.

For the Northumberland Gigaplant, Britishvolt have committed to achieving target levels for each question and over 90% of these targets a performance of ‘Best Practice’ or above. Performance against the framework commitments is independently assessed, providing Britishvolt with a robust performance scorecard and mechanism to communicate performance to key stakeholders.

Framework output
The framework approach allows Britishvolt to manage/ communicate performance against a set of robust performance targets. In certain cases, although a target may be set early in the process, delivery may not be until longer-term. On this basis, the framework allows the target to be set as ‘committed’ and changed to ‘achieved’ at the appropriate point as illustrated.

Future developments
The ESG/Sustainability framework has been designed to highlight Britishvolt’s commitments as a ‘responsible business’, across a set of key criteria and is used to demonstrate this commitment at the Gigaplant site. The framework also provides the flexibility to utilise on any other Britishvolt project, including future sites and broader aspects of the business including supply chain. On this basis, the framework provides a structure against which Britishvolt can demonstrate the sustainability of their activities in a robust and consistent way.