Midcounties Co-operative Wins Industry Leading Award for Its Sustainability Efforts

We have taken home the Energy Project of the Year accolade at the edie 2023 Awards in recognition of our work to create a sustainable future.

The edie Awards are the world’s largest sustainable business awards which champions bold and brilliant climate leadership and have been running for 16 years.

The Energy Project of the Year Award in particular recognises the best examples of proactive energy management which utilise technologies and systems techniques to achieve significant energy savings.

Our purpose as a Society is ‘to be a successful consumer co-operative working towards creating a better, fairer world’ which has seen us carry out extensive research and engagement with our members, broader stakeholders, and industry experts to create our member-led sustainability strategy.

As part of this, we have committed to reducing our Greenhouse Gas emissions by 50% over the next five years, and our work so far in doing so impressed the panel of 25 judges at this year’s edie Awards.

We reduced our electricity usage in 2022 compared to the previous year by 8.8% across like for like food stores, saving over 870 tonnes of CO2 and £1.2 million in energy costs. This follows investment in technologies such as LED lighting, energy efficient refrigeration and remote controlling systems across selected Food stores, as well as focusing on driving energy efficiency awareness amongst colleagues.

We have also researched and used consumer trends and insights to identify and provide a range of low carbon products and services to our members and customers, focusing on community renewable energy.

Our Community Power Tariff provided by our Utilities business is the UK’s only tariff powered by renewable electricity from community projects, which sees us work with 200 community energy groups to supply Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs), helping to support the growth of renewable energy and providing power to over 60,000 homes per year.

In addition to this, we have also established an Energy Reduction Steering Group, consisting of our CEO, board executives, senior management and property experts, who meet weekly to help oversee and drive forward our sustainability strategy and activity.

Our chief executive Phil Ponsonby said: “As a Society, we are striving to make a positive impact. This award recognises that and how we’re leading the way in energy management as we continue to support the growth of community renewable energy projects as well as reducing our energy usage across our operations.

We’re hugely proud of this achievement and we couldn’t have done it without the support of all our members, customers and colleagues.”

We are one of the largest consumer co-operatives in the UK, with our 730,000 owner-members at the heart of everything we do. We operate a range of businesses including Food, Travel, Childcare and Utilities.

Our members also earn a share of our profits every time they shop with us and we’re encouraging even more people to join up and help write the next chapter of our story.

To join us click here.