Driving Positive Change in The World
In 2020, ENGIE Impact embarked on a journey to architect new bold and ambitious sustainability goals. We realize that the demands of an evolving climate are urgent and that action to decarbonize our operations well within the next decade must be a priority. At the same time, we are aware of the reality of enacting transformative change across our value chain. As a service provider, we act as a catalyst for accelerated sustainability transformation for corporations, cities, and governments worldwide.
By leveraging our strategic and technical expertise, we are making strides towards meeting bold science-based emission reduction goals and sharing our progress through transparent reporting and accountability.
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Our Response to COVID-19
The global pandemic revealed valuable lessons about how we must respond to unexpected economic shocks and how to strengthen our operations, our supply chains and our communities’ health. Like many other organizations, 95% of ENGIE Impact’s workforce moved to work from home and scaled back carbon-intensive travel and commuting. To stay on track to meet our sustainability goals, we changed course, using non-linear thinking to quickly transform our ways of working for employees and clients across the globe. We initiated several studies, analyzing the carbon impact of various return-to-office scenarios. With the increase in digital activity across the company, we adopted a rigorous approach to calculate our digital carbon footprint. In parallel, we launched a remote waste audit app to continue collecting valuable waste data from our employees and sustain progress toward our zero-waste goal.
Engaging our Ecosystem
Setting the Ambition
As part of our continuous efforts to understand what is most important to our stakeholders, ENGIE Impact engaged employees, clients and even competitors to develop our materiality assessment to identify core areas of focus, revealing three primary priorities: Climate Change, Carbon Neutral Transition and Transparency & Reporting. With a clear ambition established by our executive team, our internal experts came together to establish a pathway, defining concrete actions and investment strategies to meet our bold goals within the accelerated timeline.
The type of transformation we are committed to will never succeed with top-down mandates or platitudes. That is why we are so proud of the voices of our employees, clients and community who push for change, drive progress and make ENGIE Impact a better company. Our leadership team is committed to addressing the core challenges that affect our business and our lives: inequality in society, diversity in the workplace, environmental justice and much more.
Mathias Lelièvre Chief Executive Officer
Engaging Employees
Successful sustainability strategies must be fuelled by broad employee engagement. We engaged a broad set of cross-departmental employees to identify opportunities, take action and track progress to design ambitious and rigorous science-aligned climate targets. In the race to zero, our employees are our greatest assets. After exhausting all internal carbon mitigation activities, we built a portfolio of high-quality offset projects determined by our experts and employees, officially marking the achievement of our carbon neutral status in 2020.
Employee Engagement Program
Promoting Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI)
In June 2020, Mathias Lelièvre, ENGIE Impact’s CEO, publicly shared our commitment to action and progress in defining how our organization will address the core challenges that affect our business and our communities: inequality in society, diversity in the workplace, environmental justice and more. Fueled by the perspectives of our employees, we are continuing to co-create a stronger diversity, equity and inclusion program.
Driving Environmental Action
To measure our carbon footprint, we followed the most widely used corporate standard, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. We looked at our Scope 1 and 2 emissions, including heating, cooling, refrigeration, energy purchasing, and fleet. We also looked at indirect Scope 3 emissions, like waste, commute to work, travel for meetings, and even how we use digital tools while working from home. In our commitment to transparent and accurate disclosure, our calculated figures were verified by a third party. To complete our environmental assessment, we also assess our waste generation and water use.
As a services company, we have a small environmental footprint. The majority of it is related to our carbon footprint and resides within Scope 3 emissions, a notoriously difficult category to measure and manage since these areas are not entirely under our control.
Establishing Strong Corporate Sustainability Governance
Corporate sustainability is a strategic priority for our business. Our executive committee approves, monitors and animates our company goals, policies and processes. In 2020, executives and departmental leaders worked together over several months to co-design our guiding principles, define our mission, and identify opportunities to shape sustainability into our core business model and operating procedures.
What are Sustainable Development Goals?
Alignment on ambition was pivotal to designing and progressing towards bold sustainability goals rooted in science.
Advancing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
ENGIE Impact’s primary contribution to the SDGs is through our work with global clients on developing strategies for sustainable growth and acceleration of sustainability transformation as part of the zero-carbon transition. We contribute to meeting the sustainable growth challenge, with our strategy and core services primarily aligning with seven of the 17 SDGs that tie closely with our unique operational risks.
Implementing SDGs into Our Strategies & Operations
Driving Change Through CFO Accountability
Organizations are increasingly being held accountable to meet their sustainability goals, and this accountability increases the need for guidance. In 2020, ENGIE Impact’s CFO, Vincent Manier, was named to the UNGC CFO Taskforce for the SDGs, which will provide a new direction for finance leaders to adopt changes that drive meaningful progress toward sustainable development. CFOs are critical to guiding organizations on adapting finance principles to advance sustainability progress.
Understanding Risk in our Supply Chain
Resilient value chains—both from a business perspective and a societal perspective—enable companies to address the most critical challenges of our times. We leveraged internal supply chain expertise to both address our own concerns and educate the market on best practices to address theirs. In 2020, our Value Chain experts shared our six proven levers to accelerate sustainability transformation across an organization’s unique value chain. This year, we completed our first supply chain risk assessment revealing the top 10 spend categories accounting for 97% of the total spend. Due to the pre-eminence of digital in our business model, this was on the top of the list. To accelerate decarbonization, our experts devised a four-step process to mitigate our digital carbon footprint.
Our Strategic Partners and Collaborators
Global Recognition and Certifications
- ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year for 17 consecutive years
- Awarded Best DC Innovative Partner—Huawei Middle East Partner Convention 2018
- The Energy Awards: Energy Buying Team of the Year 2018/19
- Recognized by CDP as one of only eight Accredited Software Providers
- For four consecutive years, our parent company, ENGIE, has been placed on the A List by CDP, a score widely recognized as the global benchmark for corporate environmental transparency
- Our experts serve on the SBTi’s Expert Advisory Group to help design an international standard for net-zero targets, providing on-the-ground insight from our experience managing commitments to carbon neutrality and SBTi, for ourselves and our clients
- We maintain ISO 14001, Environmental Management Systems certification for several of our legal entities
Accelerating Sustainability Transformation, Together
Sustainability transformation is complex. As we work toward our own sustainability goals, we share the latest tools, models and approaches with you.