How Motability Operations Is Improving Carbon Reporting with Novisto

Key Takeaways

• Customer: Motability Operations, which delivers the Motability Scheme to thousands of disabled people across the UK.
• Problem: Tracking near- and long-term science-based targets across a fleet of 915,000 customers with an annual, consultant-led footprint that arrived months after year-end and included "black box" elements — while investors, regulators and the public expect accurate, traceable, assured data.
• Solution: Centralising carbon data in Novisto: energy data pulled from internal systems and uploaded for instant carbon figures, drill-down into the calculations behind every output, quarterly data requests to workplace teams, Novisto ESG for stakeholder data collection, and ongoing work on the much larger Scope 3 fleet data.
• Outcome: Traceable, auditable carbon data and a clear view of what Motability Operations’ decisions result in — a roughly 70% cut in office gas and electricity use and a refurbishment centre that powers itself using solar energy for about two and a half months a year.

Results at a Glance

• 915,000+ customers on the fleet, around 120,000 of them already in electric vehicles
• ~70% reduction in gas and electricity usage at its London office after moving from eight floors to one
• From a three-month wait after year-end for an annual footprint to instant carbon figures from uploaded gas, electricity and water data

Why Motability Operations Chose Novisto

For Motability Operations, which delivers the Motability Scheme to thousands of disabled people across the UK, understanding and reducing its environmental impact is an important part of responsible business management.

With a significant proportion of its carbon footprint associated with the vehicles it leases to disabled customers, understanding this impact, and measuring progress against its science-based targets, is an important part of supporting the transition to lower-emission mobility while continuing to meet the needs of disabled people.

Before introducing Novisto, Motability Operations (MO) measured its carbon footprint annually, using data collected through internal spreadsheets and analysed by an external consultant. Results were not available until several months after the year had ended, making it difficult to track progress against sustainability targets or identify opportunities to reduce emissions throughout the year.

Motability Operations reviewed 25 providers to find a platform that could support both carbon measurement and wider sustainability reporting. Many specialised in one area, with limited capabilities in the other. MO needed a solution that would allow it to calculate its carbon footprint in-house and report against multiple frameworks, including GRI, as part of its B Corp certification journey.

Novisto stood out for its ability to bring both capabilities together in one platform, providing a more comprehensive approach to sustainability reporting that could be integrated into existing processes and help embed sustainability considerations across the business.

• Reviewed 25 platform providers and chose Novisto for its balance of carbon footprinting and ESG reporting capability
• Needed to report carbon against multiple frameworks (GRI, CDP) and stay ahead of the coming UK Sustainability Reporting Standards
• Wanted more frequent visibility of progress against science-based targets than an annual, consultant-led cycle could offer

“Novisto helps us understand the environmental impact of our business decisions, measure the progress we’re making against our sustainability goals and identify where we can make further improvements.”

— Mark Brown, Motability Operations

Reporting Carbon Out of Sync with the Business

The nature of the business means that MO’s carbon footprint is driven predominantly by its fleet of vehicles; the manufacturing, tailpipe and lifetime emissions of the cars it leases to customers made up 96% of the footprint in 2025.

Reducing these emissions presents particular challenges. The transition to electric vehicles must be affordable and accessible for disabled people, many of whom face barriers that other drivers may not experience. Around half of Scheme customers do not have access to off-street parking, making charging at home difficult or impossible. They must instead rely on public charging, which can be more expensive and less accessible.

For customers who lease a Wheelchair Accessible Vehicle, a small, converted van for a wheelchair user, the challenge is even greater. Converting these vehicles for wheelchair users involves lowering the internal vehicle floor, which is far more complex in an electric vehicle than in a petrol or diesel car due to the location of the battery.

Sustainability performance also shapes how Motability Operations funds its customer vehicle fleet. To purchase the vehicles it leases to its disabled customers, MO issues social bonds on a use-of-proceeds basis. From 2027, MO is moving to a sustainability bond framework with the addition of green bonds to fund the purchase of electric vehicles for its customers. Strong ESG and CDP ratings, based on the carbon footprint reporting it publishes, give Motability Operations’ bond investors confidence to issue bonds for up to 25 years. Motability Operations also has a sustainability-linked loan with a variable interest rate depending on sustainability performance.

The sustainability of the automotive industry is scrutinised heavily, and with regulation on the horizon and investors taking more interest, the data must be traceable, accurate and assured. UK SRS sets the precedent that mandatory sustainability disclosures, already seen in the EU, are expected to apply to UK businesses in the coming years. A 2026 gap analysis shows MO’s disclosures are in a healthy position based on its existing TCFD and risk reporting. Other voluntary disclosures such as GRI help to provide clarity and transparency. In 2025, Motability Operations certified as a B Corp, meeting high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency and accountability. B Corp is a key framework through which MO demonstrates its commitment to creating and sustaining a material positive impact on society and the environment.

Against a complicated backdrop of reporting and data, the old process fell short. Each year, Motability Operations manually collected its data and shared it with a third party, who calculated the footprint and returned it months after year-end. This left Motability Operations’ reporting out of sync: its carbon footprint was reported a year after its financials, with no real sense of how it was performing against its targets and no opportunity to influence performance.

Centralising Carbon Data in Novisto, from Energy Usage to Fleet Scope 3

Motability Operations began with the most straightforward data. Gas, electricity and water usage — the same for any company, every month or quarter — is now automated on Motability Operations’ side: the data from its own internal platforms is uploaded into Novisto and translated into an instant carbon footprint. Today, “other fuel” sources, such as air-conditioning gas top-ups or generator refills, are captured in Novisto through automated emails sent quarterly to the workplace team. They complete the data themselves in the platform, and it is added to MO’s overall footprint, so there are no manual requests to send and no chasing for replies.

Novisto also improves the assurance process. MO has always had its carbon footprint independently verified. What’s different is that the team can give its assurance provider access to the Novisto platform, and they can drill into the granularity, checking where numbers have come from and the methodology applied to each category. This provides assurers with the essential documentation and evidence needed to speed up the assurance process, without the team having to supply evidence or dig through email chains.

Motability Operations also uses Novisto ESG for complex disclosures like CDP. Built-in email requests are set up to gather essential information from across the business, replacing the manual emails and spreadsheets that had to be compiled by the team and loaded into CDP by hand. Data is instead collected in Novisto, combined with existing data already in the carbon software and collated in a single CDP submission for a much more transparent and auditable process. This makes once-complex disclosures faster and simpler for the sustainability team and their essential internal stakeholders.

Proving the Value of Business Decisions with Traceable Carbon Data

One of Novisto’s biggest advantages is that it lets Motability Operations quantify and demonstrate the value of business changes. Two examples stand out.

1. When Motability Operations downsized its London offices from an eight-floor building to a single floor in a modern, BREEAM-certified building, gas and electricity usage fell by around 70%.
2. Around two years ago, Motability Operations bought and refitted its own vehicle refurbishment centre, reducing its reliance on third parties. By using Novisto and having more timely reporting, it found that the new site, fitted with solar panels, powers itself for around two and a half months every year.

Today, Motability Operations uses Novisto for retrospective assessments of changes like these. The ambition is to use it proactively: to identify projects and monitor change in real time. This would allow sustainability to drive more activity that would reduce MO’s carbon footprint, helping it to achieve its emission reduction goals.

The traceability of sustainability data matters well beyond the sustainability team. ESG ratings agencies and frameworks like CDP are key elements investors use in their decision-making. MO aims to maintain strong ratings across the board — backed by data it can trace, explain and hand to assurers in detail.

Scaling Scope 3 Automation and Supplier Data with Novisto

The team’s objective is for Motability Operations to have its carbon footprint automated, to some degree, by this time next year: upload the data, let the platform do the work in the background, and get a carbon footprint straight away. Accuracy is next. The team is working closely with internal and external stakeholders to improve the accuracy of its data and methodologies to ensure that its footprint and progress towards its targets are legitimate. MO is targeting certain areas of its footprint that are calculated on a spend basis, looking to work with suppliers on collecting actual data on a regular basis. In the long term, this will include working with the vehicle manufacturers it procures from to understand the real impact of vehicle production and the steps being taken to reduce this.

Motability Operations has also built and implemented a third-party risk management framework and supplier code of conduct. These ask key suppliers to provide information about their environmental and social performance, targets and policies.

With CDP reporting providing a useful test case, MO is looking to use Novisto to report even more sustainability information in the future. It will begin to evolve its TCFD reporting to be compliant with UK SRS in the next few years.

“What Novisto allows us to do is drill much more into the granularity of where numbers have come from, the calculations that have been used to create certain outputs, and in turn that supports the documentation, evidence and auditability.”

— Mark Brown, Motability Operations

Want to experience this level of success? Reach out to our team today to schedule a demo.