Highland Council saves 50 tonnes CO2 with new car club

The Highland Council has introduced 35 Enterprise Car Club vehicles to help reduce its reliance on ‘grey fleet’.
 
In six months, the council has seen average business road travel costs decrease by around a third (comparing the cost per mile of the car club to its grey fleet mileage reimbursement cost).

The council also estimates that by transferring grey fleet mileage onto the car club it has also already reduced its carbon footprint by approximately 50 tCO2e.
 
The Highland Council, which covers a region of Scotland that is roughly the size of Belgium, faced a significant grey fleet issue as many of its 10,000 employees have to travel large distances to deliver local services. When it began a review of travel 18 months ago, its grey fleet mileage was more than six million miles a year, at a cost of more than £2.2 million per annum.
 
Following the in-depth review, it is now running 26 dedicated car club vehicles from Enterprise. Car club technology has also been installed in nine of the council’s own pool cars.
 
The fleet includes four Nissan LEAF electric cars and the council is in the process of procuring additional plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles through the Switched-On Fleets initiative. Enterprise technology will be installed with a view to further reducing its carbon footprint as well as operational costs.
 
The Enterprise vehicles are booked and accessed online or via a mobile app and recharged to services at an hourly rate plus pence-per-mile, which for many journeys demonstrates better value than that of grey fleet reimbursement.
 
Overall, the Highland Council estimates that its review of staff travel, including switching to Enterprise Car Club, will reduce its annual grey fleet mileage by around 1.2 million miles over the course of 2018-19.

Alongside, the council is reducing non-essential business travel, rolling-out an improved ICT infrastructure to encourage video conferencing and focusing on shared and public transport for service delivery where practical. It is also considering introducing Enterprise Car Club vans.