Sustainable supply chains
Our supply chain partners are vital to achieving our sustainability goals.
Since 2020, we have been developing and embedding our robust sustainable procurement strategy aligned to the ISO20400 Sustainable Procurement standard.
- Enhancing our contractual requirements to align with new legislation and support international expansions
- Promoting effective and targeted supplier engagement to support improved risk mitigation through enhanced due diligence and realization of opportunities through collaboration
- Introducing structured and robust reporting with the roll out of two new data platforms to support our internal, regulatory and legislative reporting requirements
Our Sustainable Procurement Code outlines the expectations and requirements on SSE's suppliers and contractors, and their supply chains.
You can find out more about our Procurement Code, our Procurement Plan and about becoming a supplier to SSE by clicking the links below.
Partnerships and collaborations
We understand the importance of working collaboratively with suppliers and other external stakeholders to create additional value.
Collaboration around supply chain sustainability has many benefits including standardisation, best practice sharing and group thinking approaches, enabling organisations to collectively excel on their sustainability journeys.
We've partnered with and collaborated through the following organisations to drive and support change, promote standardisation of reporting and provide free training resources for all.
Supply Chain Sustainability School
SSE is a proud partner of the Supply Chain Sustainability School, a collaboration of companies with a mutual interest in developing sustainability expertise and practices within their organisations and their supply chain. Organisations access the School’s wide range of guidance, resources and CPD accredited training materials free of charge. SSE is using its partnership to support its supply chain partners to mature their sustainability approach and may require them to undertake training modules, attend workshops, implement measures and access resources provided through the school. This year SSE are embedding learning pathways for suppliers to adopt and use across their business.
Visit the Supply Chain Sustainability SchoolPowering Net Zero Pact
Launched in 2022, the Powering Net Zero Pact (“the Pact”) is an initiative created by SSE plc with 10 of its strategic suppliers as a legacy of COP26.
The Pact brings together companies across all tiers of the power sector globally – including civils, shipping, renewables, electrical engineering, and others – to achieve a fair and just energy transition to net zero.
The Pact has welcomed 19 additional members in the following two years, bringing the total membership to 29 organisations.
The continued growth of the Pact demonstrates the appetite for industry collaboration on our most salient sustainability challenges.
Over the last year, the Pact Working Groups have progressed their focus areas and delivered outputs, from a net zero supply chain training pathway to address carbon literacy in procurement teams, to creating a school engagement tool in the community values working group.
You can find out more about the Pact and download the 'The Powering Net Zero Pact Annual Report 2024' by clicking below:
Social Value in the Supply Chain
Core to a just transition is the maximisation of economic opportunity for people close to the places hosting renewable energy developments.
An ongoing priority for SSE Renewables is to help create an environment where there is increased domestic content of projects.
The ability to locally share the economic benefit of low-carbon investments through sustainable domestic employment, at scale, is a key component of delivering fairness. It means working people, particularly those currently in industries which are in decline, can access new skills and jobs.
At the same time, this ambition must be balanced with the cost of delivering renewable power.
Socio-economic analyses were undertaken on a number of projects and we have embedded the Supplier Data Capture Tool (SDCT) and we are trialling socio-economic impact data capture tool 'Loop', to better track and understand the local and regional economic contribution.
Updates on these activities are included in the SSE Renewables Sustainability Report and all of SSE Renewables’ project-level socio-economic reports, along with the technical reports detailing the methodology used, can be found at the links below.