Tate Galleries set a new carbon baseline

The world-leading Tate Galleries are at the forefront of climate action. In April 2019, Tate became the world’s most iconic cultural institution to declare a climate emergency in solidarity with a growing community of climate activists.

Tate has proactively reduced its carbon footprint through energy efficiencies and the use of renewables, as well as taking considerable steps to reduce its production impacts.

Creative Green support

Tate partnered with Julie’s Bicycle’s Creative Green consultancy team to set ambitious goals to drive further improvements, as part of the UK’s commitment to net zero carbon emissions. To establish an accurate baseline to track progress across all its activities, the team helped Tate to calculate its total carbon footprint for 2018-19. This encompassed everything from energy and transport (including art freight), to all aspects of procurement, retail, food and beverage, waste and water, using the best currently available information.

By including direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions, this carbon footprint study was the first of its kind for an arts organisation of Tate’s size. 

Next steps to net zero carbon

Following the benchmarking, the Creative Green team made key recommendations for future action, to support Tate’s commitment to its Net Zero Carbon pathway. By continually tracking progress against the baseline, Tate will now be able to measure environmental performance and demonstrate the impact of its environmental programmes.

Tate also won the Creative Green Pioneer Award 2020 for delivering exceptional innovation on sustainability, and testing new solutions to environmental challenges.

“With Creative Green support we were able to really challenge ourselves, focusing on increasing the efficiency of resources used, reviewing our business models and challenging our day to day practices as we work towards our net zero future”.

Bella Sereno, Environmental & Sustainability Manager, Tate

Find further information about Creative Green consultancy services. You can also read the sustainability progress update on Tate’s website here and find the carbon footprinting report we prepared for Tate linked below.