Sustainability Strategy in Action

Shortly after we launched our Carbon Negative goal mid-2020, our team began to model key decarbonization levers that would reveal a pathway to define science-based goals. To do so, we first leveraged our verified GHG emissions baseline and modeled our business as usual trajectory over the next ten years. Next, we are exploring the potential impact of a range of policies and investments to reduce emissions, procure green power, and invest in high-quality offsets to meet our accelerated ambitions.

The COVID-19 pandemic played a critical role in these planning efforts, providing a unique testing ground for some of the key levers, such as business travel, commuting, and our digital footprint. Though circumstances will change, this period has enabled us to test and implement organization-wide tools, programs, and trainings that can catalyze emissions reduction without sacrificing productivity. More than ever, we recognize that reaching our target will require non-linear thinking, coupled with a coordinated transformation across our global ecosystem. In 2021, we will receive verification of our carbon neutral status.

Here's How We're Accelerating Progress to Carbon Negative:

1. Develop standard policies and procedures to reduce emissions in our operations and work with dedicated taskforces to build comprehensive strategies and implementation plans to mitigate emissions in key focus areas, including business travel, commuting, remote work and digital.
   
2. Implement a best-in-class renewable energy procurement strategy across a highly distributed geographic footprint. We will leverage expertise from global business lines and partners across the ENGIE group to ensure continued use of an orchestrated global strategy with local considerations.
   
3. Mobilize rapidly evolving carbon markets by working with a range of governments, non-profits, and industry leaders, such as Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), SBTi and others, to develop high-quality offset projects and contribute to policy development.

Our strategy began in 2020 with a review of our water footprint and a scan of our water risks across our North American and global locations. The next step is collecting granular cost and consumption data to create a water baseline for office locations. However, with most offices closed due to COVID-19, it became difficult to collect the necessary data. Our experts are assessing the best approach to measure the environmental impact that was displaced from offices to homes during work hours to stay on track to meeting our goals. Working closely with global water stewardship partners, we will analyze discovery reports to identify high-risk locations, create a water baseline for each international office and drive forward mitigation strategies. Investing in Water Restoration Certificates that facilitate positive externalities in our communities will be a key focus area in 2021.

We recognize that constructive collaboration with our ecosystem of stakeholders will be key to meeting our goals. We have engaged in a series of high-level governance meetings to identify ideal partners and seek to participate in coalitions such as 50L Home to catalyze action around water conservation and re-use.

Here's How We're Accelerating Progress to Water Balance

1. Balance North American water use through purchase of Water Restoration Certificates (WRCs): Upon implementing water mitigation efforts, we will purchase WRCs to balance the water associated with water use, for a total of 4.5 million gallons. WRCs will prioritize projects that address water issues in regions closest to ENGIE Impact's North American office locations.  
2. Collaborate with industry leaders and conduct international project landscape discovery: We will explore water restoration project opportunities at our global locations with higher water risks due to climate change, including Manila, Brussels, London, and Santiago. We will identify primary watersheds and their stressors, opportunities for positive watershed impact, and, subsequently, ideal partners for projects at each location to determine optimal resource allocation.
3. Develop international water restoration projects: We will set ambition proportional to the magnitude of the water challenge through the lens of risk; availability, quality, and reputation.

Our strategy began by analyzing waste audit data across North American location from previous on-site characterizations to estimate waste generation and diversion rates. With that foundational understanding of the baseline, our experts are better positioned to deliver tailored programs and identify ideal waste-diversion vendors for each U.S location. Given the evolving conditions of remote work due to COVID-19, we will use our historic waste invoice data and resume waste audits once employees return to offices. We are actively appointing 'waste champions' at each location to drive waste assessments and further analyze data to identify partners best suited to meet our unique needs.

Despite the challenges that COVID-19 brought to the waste industry, we relentlessly pursued our targets leveraging expertise and collaboration. Over the past few months, we ramped up digital sustainability efforts to systematically address e-waste. Our experts analyzed the impact of remote work on waste generation and diversion efforts and, in response, began to develop innovative solutions such as a Remote Waste Audit app, which will be made available to all employees in early 2021. To kick off remote waste reduction initiatives, we partnered with TerraCycle to bring the Zero Waste Box program to our team members in North America. Staying on track to meet our goal, we will continuously enhance our zero-waste strategy in 2021 to introduce employee education programs, new technology and zero waste procurement policies.

Here's How We're Accelerating Progress to Zero Waste:

1. Build a zero-waste roadmap with clear milestones serving as a blueprint to meet goals: By leveraging technology and high-quality data, we will produce an evidence-based roadmap highlighting data-driven targets and intermediate goals which enhance clarity and promote responsibility amongst team members.
2. Appoint waste champions at each office location: An expert from our 'green team' will drive forward local zero-waste initiatives and programs by implementing agile processes around data gathering and waste assessments in early 2021.
3. Launch remote waste audit app: While most of our workforce continues to work remotely in early 2021, this app will help assess the volume of waste generated at home offices during work hours. The app's functionalities will continue to serve useful in-office once employees return full time. After piloting within our own operations, we hope to introduce this app to complement our suite of tools provided to clients, aiding their transition to more circular operations.