If every building in Leeds city centre's square mile used Citeco for its reactive and planned maintenance, the city would save an estimated 200 tonnes of CO2e a year — and keep around 768,000 van-kilometres off its streets. That's 19 times around the Earth.
Big claims deserve workings. This page is the full methodology: every assumption, every source, every number we used. If you think something's wrong, tell us and we'll change it.
Full scenario spread: 63 to 662 tonnes a year depending on assumptions. Our central case is 190–234 tonnes (the range reflects whether the embodied carbon of vehicles is counted); we quote "an estimated 200 tonnes". We'd rather under-claim than over-claim.
Every maintenance job in the city centre arrives by van today, usually from a depot miles outside the city. Ours arrive on foot, supported by one electric vehicle per team that never parks. The saving is the incumbent travel, minus ours.
We assume 2,500 rateable premises inside the inner ring road, each needing an average of 12 engineer visits a year across electrical, mechanical, fire and security — reactive and planned combined. That's 30,000 jobs a year. Cross-checked against how many full-time engineers that workload implies (~26 — coherent with our own staffing model for the same patch).
The most local established competitor we track is a ~8 km round trip from the square mile. Most are regional or national — registered in London, Liverpool and Birmingham, dispatching mobile engineers across patches. We assume a 24 km average round trip, which is conservative against that picture.
UK Government (DEFRA/DESNZ 2025) conversion factor for an average diesel van: ~0.25 kgCO2e/km. We assume 10% of incumbent fleets are already electric, and add the embodied carbon of the vehicles themselves, amortised per kilometre. Failed first-time fixes add a 1.15× revisit factor.
Citeco engineers walk. Each team shares one EV support vehicle — roughly 2 km per job, charged from the grid, with its embodied manufacturing carbon included. That's ~0.26 kgCO2e per job, deducted from every saving figure on this page. Nothing is rounded in our favour.
| Input | Conservative | Central | Stretch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Premises in the square mile | 1,800 | 2,500 | 3,200 |
| Engineer visits per premises per year | 8 | 12 | 18 |
| Jobs per year | 14,400 | 30,000 | 57,600 |
| Incumbent round trip per job (km) | 15 | 24 | 35 |
| Revisit factor (failed first-time fix) | 1.00 | 1.15 | 1.15 |
| Fleet factor incl. embodied (kgCO2e/km) | 0.310 | 0.292 | 0.292 |
| Citeco footprint per job (kgCO2e) | 0.26 | 0.26 | 0.26 |
| Annual saving (tonnes CO2e) | ~63 | ~234 | ~662 |
| Net van-km avoided per year | ~187,000 | ~768,000 | ~2,200,000 |
| Per premises, per year | ~35 kg | ~94 kg | ~207 kg |
Excluding embodied vehicle carbon (tailpipe and grid electricity only), the central case is ~190 tonnes. Central case equivalents: ~130 cars off the road for a year, or the annual CO2 absorption of ~10,600 mature trees. A typical premises switching to Citeco saves ~94 kg CO2e and ~307 van-km a year — we'll put your building's figure in writing.
No. Electric vans are better — and we run one per team. But every kilometre still charges from a grid that isn't zero-carbon. Every van still has to be built, battery and all. And tyres, brakes and road wear don't care what the engine runs on.
Even if every competitor switched to electric tomorrow, the square mile would still save an estimated 100 tonnes a year with Citeco. Around 43% of the saving survives full electrification — because it comes from the miles, not the fuel.
The greenest mile is the one never driven.
These particles come from friction and wear — tyres gripping, brakes biting, road surfaces breaking down — not from the engine. So a diesel van and an electric van shed much the same amount into the street you're walking down. The Government's own experts, DEFRA's Air Quality Expert Group, put it plainly: cleaner urban air needs fewer road-transport miles, not just cleaner engines.
This is the part of the problem only our model reaches. Engineers on foot, one shared electric vehicle per team, far fewer miles inside the square mile — and fewer miles is the only lever that cuts tyre, brake and road-wear pollution where people live, work and breathe.
If you spot a flawed assumption or a better data source, we want to know. And if you'd like your building's share of the saving in writing, ask.
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