The Greenhouse Neutral Programme

Climate change has been a strategic priority for Swiss Re for more than 20 years. It is a key topic for a re/insurer, because it is likely to cause more extreme and more frequent weather events, resulting in rising damages and insurance losses. Our strategy to tackle climate change rests on four pillars, one of which is the pledge to reduce our own CO₂ emissions (see section “Climate change”).

Our Greenhouse Neutral Programme has been the principal initiative to achieve this goal. Launched in 2003, it originally combined two commitments: firstly, to reduce our CO₂ emissions by 15% per employee (full-time equivalent or FTE) within ten years and, secondly, to fully offset all the remaining emissions by purchasing high-quality emission reduction credits, thus making the company greenhouse neutral for the whole period between 2003 and 2013.

After meeting our initial reduction target well ahead of time, we gradually raised it to 45% per employee. By the end of the programme’s first commitment cycle in 2013, we had achieved a total reduction in CO₂ emissions per employee of 49.3% compared to the base year 2003. (Please note that we have had to correct the previously stated figure of 56.5%, because a reporting error concerning business travel in 2013 led to a substantial underestimation of total CO₂ emissions per employee that year.)