24 Strategic value creation Creating and sharing value – Story 2
Creating and sharing value – Story 2
Raising our ambitions to become climate positive The need to increase action to combat climate change is at the top of our agenda. Head of Sustainability Hallvard Bremnes talks about our achievements and positive outlook.
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hy is climate change so important? The world has long known that climate change will cause irreversible damage to our planet and to humanity if we do not take even bolder action. Since the Paris Agreement set a target to limit global warming to below 2°C above preindustrial levels in 2015, Givaudan has committed to taking every possible step to safeguard the planet and future generations. We are fully aligned with the strong coalition driving global action. We take a leading role in relevant organisations such as The Climate Group, CDP, RE100 and We Mean Business, and we work with others such as the Science Based Targets initiative.
Givaudan – 2019 Integrated Annual Report
Why has Givaudan stepped up its climate ambitions? We originally aligned our greenhouse gas emission targets to the 2.0°C target. In 2019, the urgency of the climate challenge became obvious through new evidence, and for this reason we realigned our targets to the most ambitious 1.5°C limit. The United Nations has also called for companies to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. At end of 2019, we committed to this UN pledge, and went even further: we announced our ambition to become climate positive before 2050. This means doing more than reducing or even eliminating emissions: it means that we will also develop initiatives to remove carbon from the atmosphere, for instance, by planting trees. Our confidence in this new ambition is largely due to the intense work by our Environmental Sustainability Team. How are you going about achieving your more ambitious targets? We will reduce emissions directly related to our activity by 70% between 2015 and 2030. The Science Based Targets initiative has validated this as supporting the 1.5°C limit. This 70% reduction relates to emissions from our own production processes and from the electricity and steam we purchase, known as
