National Express has become the first transport company to be awarded the ‘Gold Standard’ by Carbon Saver - an independent advisory board which rates environmental performance across all major industries.

The Group received the top environmental accolade following a huge reduction in their carbon consumption, mainly in their UK Bus Division, through the installation of state of the art green technologies.  National Express has saved enough carbon to power 722 houses annually.

Every roof of the transport provider’s bus depots in the West Midlands, Coventry and Dundee has been installed with photo voltaics solar panels that will not only help to power the depots but will also feed carbon neutral energy back into the National Grid.

Alongside the installation of Solar Panel technology National Express are also half way through a roof replacement programme that will see new energy efficient roofing at all of the their UK Bus Divisions.  This will see more heat retained helping to keep down energy consumption in depot.

Alongside the building improvements and installation of Solar Panels National Express has introduced the PowerPerfector voltage optimisation system, LED lighting and the Vickers energy management System to its depots all of which are showing big reductions in Carbon usage.

All together these measures have resulted in an annual saving of over 3,400 tonnes of Co2 which is the equivalent to 722 houses.

Stuart Parker, Environmental Director of National Express said:

“National Express is committed to continually reducing the Carbon we use to run our services.  To be the first transport company to get this award reflects the amount of effort and resources we have put in to reducing our carbon consumption and improving our energy efficiency.”