In October 2020, our carbon team began the preparatory phase of our data gathering campaign to calculate our environmental footprint by following the Greenhouse Gas protocol. After cleaning and consolidating the raw data, we calculated our greenhouse gas (GHG) numbers that we sent to our third-party verifier. In 2020, we are reporting 5,646 MTCO₂e, a 28% decrease compared to our baseline year.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, our work setting shifted dramatically in 2020 and to ensure accurate representation of our greenhouse accounting, we worked diligently on developing a methodology to account for the impact of remote working. A comparatively small carbon footprint did not stop us from setting ambitious science-based targets. We committed to setting Scope 1 and 2 emissions targets soon after our company was established and today, our experts are actively working to conduct a full Scope 3 screening. We are collecting data across the ENGIE ecosystem to quantify our comprehensive  Scope 3 emissions footprint and identify the most appropriate reduction target in line with SBTi criteria. As we began to model the size, scale, and phasing of potential decarbonization opportunities in a post-pandemic setting, we understood that reaching our target will require non-linear thinking, coupled with a coordinated transformation across our global ecosystem. After exhausting our internal carbon mitigation options, we purchased offset credits from projects selected by our experts and employees, officially marking the achievement of our carbon neutral status in 2020. We are continuing along our decarbonization journey and driving leading-edge sustainability practices to be carbon negative by 2021.

Our Next Steps to Accelerate Progress to Carbon Negative:

1. Develop standard policies and procedures to measure and 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. Invest in high-quality offset projects. To further our climate action on an annual basis, we are investing in high-quality projects that avoid and remove carbon from the atmosphere. Our need to use carbon offsets will decrease over time through the continuous deployment of decarbonization solutions across our business to reach our carbon negative goal.
   
3. 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
   
4. Leverage our expertise to simplify carbon markets. Our experts are mobilizing rapidly evolving carbon markets by working with a range of governments, non-profits and industry leaders, including the Science Based Targets Initiative’s (SBTi) Net Zero Expert Advisory Group and the Taskforce for Scaling the Voluntary Carbon Market (TSVCM) Committee. ENGIE Impact also partnered with leading institutions including EDF and High Tide to publish a report on Mobilizing Voluntary Carbon Markets to Drive Climate Action.

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 was to collect granular cost and consumption data to create a water baseline for office locations (4.5 million gallons in 2020 in the U.S.). However, with most offices closed due to COVID-19, it became difficult to collect the necessary data. The challenge was exacerbated by low occupancy rates for a majority of 2020 hindering our ability to make meaningful comparisons. Once occupancy rates return to normal, we will collect more accurate data to track the ENGIE Impact specific consumption in the buildings where we share space with other tenants and assess the best approach to mitigate water usage. Taking a proactive approach, we are engaging employees through educational campaigns about mitigation strategies they can apply both at home and at work. We are also investigating options for managing invoices and metering data on water consumption to build our understanding around actual consumption when possible, making mitigation measurable and more meaningful.

Our Next Steps to Accelerate Progress to Water Balance

1. Define our water balance strategy: We are analyzing the best approach to offset our 2021 water use at our U.S. locations, including the possibility of using Water Restoration Credits (WRCs). We are also refining our methodologies for measurement, both in the U.S. and in our international locations.  
   
2. Collaborate with industry leaders and conduct international project landscape discovery: We will continue exploring 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, based on the results of step 2: We will set ambition proportional to the magnitude of the water challenge through the lens of risk, availability, quality, and reputation.

Despite the challenges of a remote work environment due to COVID-19 restrictions, we are continuing our pursuit of waste data that will inform our next steps. We adapted our data collection strategy to accommodate the evolving needs, moving away from on-site waste audits, instead leveraging historical waste data to create temporary baselines. Despite the number of employees still fully remote—many of whom may stay remote full time with future flexible scheduling—we are committed to achieving our zero waste goal wherever our employees are working. Therefore, we are focusing on an employee engagement strategy that will bring our waste strategy into focus, including communication and a change management plan.

We launched a remote waste audit app in Q1 as a pilot program with a small sample of U.S.-based participants for a three-week collection period. As we collect more concrete data, we will look to launch the app company-wide. We also began focusing on our e-waste stream and are currently collecting data, with the goal of creating U.S. purchasing and end-of-life processes that can then be modeled at all international locations. ENGIE Impact has also been renovating offices in Boston, St. Paul and Spokane and partnered with Green Standards to divert from landfills 100% of the furniture and equipment that is no longer needed.

Our Next Steps to Accelerate Progress to Zero Waste:

1. Expand remote waste audit app:  We will expand the roll-out of our remote waste audit. The next step for this program is moving employees into self-guided audits to continually calculate their home waste footprint and educate them on diversion and zero waste strategies. As we gain valuable insights from our pilot group, we will expand the pilot internationally.
2. Launch employee engagement campaigns:  We will be launching three campaigns on our internal employee engagement platform to educate employees on the concept of ‘zero waste’ and their role in achieving our goal. The three campaigns will focus on identifying where employees are on their individual waste journeys: beginner, intermediate or advanced, giving more employees the opportunity to participate in remote waste audits. A robust communication plan and change management plan are currently being developed.
3. Gather e-waste data: As part of our work to reduce our digital footprint, we will work with ICT hardware providers to understand the lifecycle assessment of the products we purchase, and establish purchasing and end-of-life processes as we work toward our goal of standardizing green purchasing by the end of 2022.