Can Jaguar Land Rover really be green?

Julian Whitehead: We see carbon-offsetting as a major contribution towards tackling climate change

BusinessGreen.com: Sustainability directors are still a rare breed. What is your background?

Julian Whitehead: My background is 30 years in the motor industry. I've worked in a number of different areas, primarily in marketing. I've been in my current sustainability role for about two years, and beforehand I was brand communications director for Land Rover. I came to this role because we had been developing strategies for communicating our sustainability credentials within the marketing function, and it became very obvious that the business needed a focus for its sustainability activities. The role started out as a Land Rover responsibility, but then expanded quite rapidly to include Jaguar.

Just to be clear, we are now Jaguar Land Rover, a subsidiary of Tata, whereas when the job was established we were a division of the Ford Motor Company. We are now a standalone organisation with a board of directors across both brands.

Where does your role fit within the new hierarchy?

I report to the board. The role is about bringing together the sustainability strategy development and planning for the group as a whole.

What would you say are your major achievements over the past two years?

We've established sustainability as a board-level priority. We've set long-term targets for both our products and our business footprint. And we've established a network of senior management people across the business to drive things forward. The real progress has been over the past 12 months - before that we were focused on the sale of the business.

You say sustainability is a board priority, but does the rest of the company get it?

The big challenge for us is to make sure that the organisation does get it. We have a lot of work to do, to drive change through the organisation as a whole. Staff objectives are set through scorecards, so the first work that we've done is establishing a framework within which the business can manage its sustainability goals. First, we set up a level-one meeting - a monthly board meeting that is dedicated purely to sustainability issues. Once you get that, you need an infrastructure to bring actions to the attention of the board. So we also have a level-two meeting, chaired by myself, which has representatives from all of the major functions across the business - they have responsibility for the objectives within their part of the business, and pulling together the actions.

In addition to that, we have a new chief executive in David Smith who is passionate about the subject. And that is essential. Any organisation that makes major progress in this area is led by a CEO who's got a real passion for sustainability.

Do you have any metrics to track how much progress you are making?

Yes. We measure and monitor - we've been ISO14001 accredited for many years now, since about 1997. So there are disciplines throughout the business for measuring and reducing our energy consumption. We’ve got three factories: Solihull is our largest, where most of our Land Rover products are made. We've reduced the carbon footprint of Solihull by more than 30 per cent since 1997. We've also reduced energy consumed per vehicle assembled by a compound of 4.5 per cent per annum since 2002. So we can point to some very useful efficiency improvements. We are setting more demanding targets as we move forward, so that we can accelerate progress. Work on making our supply chain greener was also described in the FT recently.

Your company could be accused of greenwashing - Land Rover vehicles in particular are very heavy, and while there's an offsetting programme, offsetting itself is often attacked as being little more than a way to salve the conscience. How would you counter such criticism?

We don't see carbon offsetting as salving our conscience - we see it as a major contribution towards tackling climate change. The offsetting scheme started on the Land Rover side of the business in 2006. The production cycle of a new motor vehicle is many years and we recognised that there was a need to do something more immediate. The scheme operates in a number of markets - it started in the UK and has spread to other areas including the Middle East. The vehicle's use is offset for 72,000 kilometres and we also offset all our assembly facilities.

Now, I accept that there is controversy about offsetting. We have a scheme that is one of the largest of its type in the world, it's a voluntary scheme, operated by ClimateCare - now owned by investment bank JP Morgan although they were independent when we started working with them. The scheme is made up of projects all around the world - we're not just buying offsets from the market. One project, in Uganda, is making charcoal-burning stoves. Charcoal is the primary fuel in Uganda. It obviously involves deforestation, then an energy intensive and inefficient process produces the charcoal, which is then typically burned inefficiently as well. So with this project we provide not only local employment, but also much more efficient cooking facilities. We reduce the amount of fuel used, and there are health benefits as well because charcoal is pretty nasty stuff. That's just one project. By the middle of this year the offsetting scheme as a whole will have reduced carbon emissions into the atmosphere by 1.3m tonnes.

You said it’s a voluntary scheme - how does it work?

It's voluntary in that it's not part of the statutory carbon trading scheme. It's also voluntary at the point of purchase. If you buy a Land Rover then the offsetting is part of the purchase price. You can opt out, but we find that very few people do.

The US is a big market for Land Rover - is the offsetting scheme in place there?

No, it isn't. The US market's understanding of climate change and awareness of offsetting is rather different to Europe, although we think people's attitudes to climate change will change in the US, now that Barack Obama has very publicly said he's moving it up the agenda.

In Europe, do you think the steps the EU has taken to curb automotive emissions have come at the right pace?

From a product point of view, I think the EU legislation is good legislation. It has focused the industry on the opportunities to increase efficiency. Certainly from our point of view, we will be improving the efficiency of our range by 25 per cent over the next five years. We have plans for a number of new technologies, from the LRX small Land Rover, to hybrid technology, to the new stop-start system on our diesel Freelander.

The way the EU legislation works means every car manufacturer has its own target, which has been calculated so that the total average for new cars across the EU will come in at 130g/km. The relationship is based on weight - your target is determined by the vehicles you currently produce. So the target for Fiat or Peugeot, say, will be below 130g/km, and ours is above.

We have plans to hit our target. We're looking at lightweight technologies and at fundamental technologies, including four projects done in conjunction with other suppliers. The first of these is called Limo Green, where we're working with Lotus on a series-hybrid, diesel-electric powertrain. It's basically a highly efficient diesel engine running at constant speed, driving a generator to power an electric motor to drive the car. The same principles are used in diesel-electric locomotives. The second is a flywheel hybrid, using the flywheel to store energy. The third is a plug-in hybrid, and the fourth is a plan to increase the amount of recycled aluminium in the auto industry. Our Jaguar XK and XJ models have aluminium bodies, and we're working with our aluminium supplier on that.

Land Rover has very rigid brand values - producing nothing but four-wheel-drive cars, for example. Do you think those values will change, or need to change?

We are wedded to the capability of our vehicles - Land Rover has only ever made off-road vehicles in its 60 year history and at the absolute core is a breadth of capability. Now we are looking at how that capability remains relevant as we move forward. We've demonstrated that with our LRX concept, and we continue to work to make sure that the kind of vehicles we produce remain relevant.