Young Innovators Council (YIC) is the voice of young people at Northern Gas Networks. Its aim is to provide young people’s perspectives and help ensure young people’s thoughts and opinions are put at the heart of our decision making through meaningful and relevant engagement with our future customers.
We wanted to understand the YIC’s views on the options NGN are exploring for the business’ responsibility and accountability if they don’t achieve their voluntary carbon targets. We also wanted to gauge the YIC’s prioritisation of these options, and explore other options or questions around NGN’s accountability for their voluntary carbon targets.
Over 50%
of participants said that they would prefer to see NGN publicly reporting on performance, explaining what targets have been missed and what is being done to improve.
Communicating with our communities
You said that you know NGN are holding ourselves accountable because you’re closely involved and understand our work, but you told us that we need to be clear and make information readily available to the public and communities that we serve.
We will continue to post updates and reports such as out Annual Environmental Report, onto our website in order to keep stakeholders updated. Due to the fact these reports are regulated and sometimes difficult to follow, NGN will be preparing a shorter 8-page version which will include a flavour of performance, a case study based on what’s most important to stakeholders to learn about, and further signposting.
Holding ourselves accountable
Most of the YIC agreed that giving public apologies for missed CRTs without subsequent actions are worthless. One YIC member called it ‘sugar coating’ and stressed that people will increasingly see through apologies if they’re overused, or the explanations aren’t valid. It was said that apologies could be effective coming from a big business if delivered alongside other actions.
Moving forward NGN will ensure to communicate clear actions and outcomes to go alongside any public apology. If deemed effective and useful, then it may be something we review in the future, however this would be siloed and separate to any wider PR pieces.
Going above and beyond
You told us that messaging such as “together we are a network” is an important message that explains NGN is more than just a gas company. You want to see a responsible business showing this by going above and beyond, and helping in community warm spaces, homeless shelters, or food banks/kitchens. You also said you’d like to see the onus spread to the entire energy supply chain, by putting pressure on NGN’s suppliers and contractors as well as other big energy companies to do their own public reporting on emissions.
We will work with our supply chain moving forward to ensure they are also accountable. We will ensure that whichever approach NGN takes in the future, involves positive action and long-term sustainable change.