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.

Why 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.

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

“Our ambitious new target to reduce carbon emissions will support the efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C. We are very proud of that.

scope 1 and 2 emissions under the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the most widely used international accounting tool.

One of the ways we will achieve this is by switching Givaudan’s entire electricity supply to fully renewable sources by 2025. This is our commitment as a member of RE100, which brings together influential businesses committed to 100% renewable electricity. Meanwhile, across our operations, we are implementing significant energy efficiency projects by utilising first-rate science and innovative technologies. Reducing our dependency on fossil fuels contributes to our positive outlook for the future and confidence in our raised climate change ambitions.

What major challenges do you face?

Having ambitious targets for limiting emissions from our own operations is not enough – we also need to work to reduce emissions from our entire value chain, which we account for as our scope 3 target. This is the biggest challenge we face: more than 80% of our GHG emissions come from activities related to our value chain. And this is why we are stepping up our work to engage and motivate our suppliers. For those who are less advanced on the journey, we will offer extra support. And for those who are further along the road, we will consider making them our partners of choice.

And what are your ambitions longer-term?

We have defined our Company’s purpose and a part of this is an ambitious ‘goal for Nature’ which is to show our love for nature in everything that we do. This is why we have announced we will become climate positive before 2050 across scope 1, 2 and 3.

We will go the extra mile, and we feel confident in our ability to achieve our stretched targets and have faith in our entire value chain to be at our side.

Moving forward at Climate Week NYC

Climate Week NYC in New York in September was one of the key climate events in 2019, and a perfect opportunity to announce our new greenhouse gas reduction target. Our senior management and our Environmental Sustainability Team attended the event, strengthening our climate action agenda with our international partners.