Renewable energy and RE100/EP100
Purchasing power from renewable rather than conventional sources has been a key measure of our Greenhouse Neutral Programme. Concluding a gradual build-up that started in 2005, we are now using 100% renewable power at all the Group’s locations where it is available in reliable and trustworthy quality (ie at a total of 25 locations in Asia, Europe, North America and Oceania). This means that approximately 84% of our total power consumption comes from renewable sources.
To assess the quality of the renewable power available in individual locations and select suitable sources, we use a “minimum standard” that clearly states how we define renewable power and what requirements it needs to meet. At our Zurich headquarters, for example, we only buy “naturemade star” electricity (www.naturemade.ch), which meets high ecological quality standards in its production beyond those required by environmental legislation. In Munich, we purchase our electricity from NaturEnergie (www.naturenergie.de), one of Germany’s premier suppliers of renewable energy.
RE100 and EP100
In a number of countries where we want to grow our business, there is a lack of renewable energy supplies in reliable quality. At the end of 2017, approximately 84% of the power we purchased across the Group came from renewable energy sources. We are committed to raising this figure to 100%, which is why we helped establish the Climate Group’s RE100 initiative in 2014 as a founding member.
The goal of this initiative is to unite the world’s most influential companies in a shared commitment to use 100% renewable power by 2020. To achieve this, the RE100 group approaches policymakers and regulators at national and sub-national level to make renewable energy more available. RE100 grew substantially again in 2017 and now includes more than 120 of the world’s largest companies.
Going beyond these collective efforts, we have recently started to build solar power plants at our own offices. You can read about our latest initiative in Bangalore in Focus: Solar power plant at our new Bangalore office.
In 2016, we also signed up to the EP100 initiative, launched by the Climate Group (www.theclimategroup.org) and the Global Alliance for Energy Productivity (www.globalproductivity.org). This is a shared commitment by leading global companies to double their energy productivity or, in other words, to get more economic output from each unit of energy.