SAP: Climate 21: Partnering for Climate Action with SAP

Problem Being Solved

Although the impact of COVID-19 will reduce global emissions in 2020, we clearly remain on an unsustainable path, as Voice of Action recently reported. We know that the effective use of technology can help abate roughly 20 per cent of projected greenhouse gases. But to truly accelerate the pace of change that is needed to make an immediate and positive impact on a sustainable path, we must partner on all levels and across organisations, industries, and regions.

Solution

The biggest impact we can have is not on our own action, rather by how we can help our customers and our partners achieve their own targets and goals. That is the most exciting opportunity we see ahead – how we can help our customers achieve their goals.

We seek to embed sustainability in everything we do: our solutions, our operations, and our social investment. As SAP, we already have made efforts and commitments to our own sustainability targets:

• Reducing SAP’s greenhouse gas emissions back to levels of 2000 (despite employee base increasing fourfold). Achieved in 2018
• SAP will make its operations carbon neutral by 2025.
• At Davos 2020, we joined the CEO Carbon Neutral Challenge, committing to implement a 360° climate strategy
• Global Plastic Action Partnership to create a cleaner ocean

But we understand that meeting our sustainability commitments isn’t as challenging for us as it is for some of the key industries our customers operate in.

Our Climate 21 program is where we will achieve the biggest impact. We will help our customers measure, understand and minimise the carbon footprint of their products and operations.

It delivers carbon emission insights for a company’s products by plant, profit centre, or cost centre and delivers transparency on the carbon emissions of a product across the entire value chain, including production, raw materials, energy use, and transport. Producers can also integrate data from product databases and third-party solutions to analyse and understand the emissions breakdowns.

With SAP Product Carbon Footprint Analytics, the first solution in its Climate 21 program, if a specific product is made in more than one location place, for example, comparisons can be made for each activity of the value chain to determine the amount of CO2 it takes to produce the product in each location.

Transparency about the carbon footprint lays the foundation to minimise carbon emissions. Producers can use the data to run simulations to optimise the carbon footprint according to buyer requirements.

Transparency about the product carbon footprint for any good or service can also be passed down the value chain to consumers, enabling buying decisions to be based not only on quality or cost

Outcomes

Partnering for Action

With Climate 21, SAP provides a starting point to help companies preparing for a change driven by incentive and choice.

Embedding an enterprise-wide approach to CO2 will help businesses gain transparency and awareness, provide an economic incentive to companies to act now, and can be a starting point for action at scale.

In this way, companies become not only smart, but also sustainable, helped by SAP.

Adding a green line to the top and bottom line for measuring a company’s performance symbolises our ability to change for the better of our global community. To see how our customers are already making a difference with Climate21, read about Doehler, a global producer, marketer and provider of technology-driven natural ingredients, who is taking sustainability to the heart of their operations.

Leading by example: Internal efforts

• 100% renewable electricity We’ve tied our business strategy to our environmental strategy by creating a “green cloud” powered by 100% renewable electricity through solar panels in some locations, but primarily on the purchase of renewable energy certificates (RECs) to achieve our target of 100% renewable electricity. By using our green cloud services, customers can significantly reduce their carbon emissions.
• In 2019, 55 SAP locations have achieved the ISO 14001 certification. All SAP data centres and facilities have been running on green energy since 2014. In addition, SAP is introducing an environmental management system reflecting the ISO 14001 standard at SAP sites worldwide.
• 2.3 million trees planted When emissions cannot be avoided or reduced, SAP compensates by investing in CO2 offsets and in return receives CO2 credits from the sponsored projects. The focus is on highquality projects such as the Livelihoods Fund, which combine reforestation with the improvement of the livelihood of rural communities and fulfills the GOLD standard of the World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF).