Climate Week, the PLACE TO ACT
Organised by the United Nations, Climate Week provides a strategic opportunity to discuss and act on climate change. Since 2009, the event has been bringing together international leaders from business, government and civil society. The 2021 edition takes place against the specific backdrop of accelerating climate disruption. With uninterrupted forest fires for months on end in California, Canada's heat dome, forest fires in Europe, deadly floods in Germany and China, record 35°C temperatures in north-western Russia and eastern Finland in May1 etc., the only solution that IPCC experts has found to limit the consequences of global warming is to reduce CO2 emissions by 45% by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 20502.
Decarbonisation: from intent to action
So how can we act? Today, over 400 of the world's 2,000 largest public companies have pledged to achieve net zero emissions. But fewer than 30% of the 200 leaders of large multinational corporations surveyed by ENGIE Impact, our consulting entity specialising in decarbonisation, think they are on the right track. It is indeed a difficult task. First, a realistic roadmap must be defined. Next, all decarbonisation potential must be identified and harnessed. Finally, progress must be measured. On 18 May 2021, Catherine MacGregor led the way by setting out our own decarbonisation strategy with a Net Zero Carbon target for 2045. So, ENGIE is playing its part with its own stringent, ambitious targets. But we are going one step further by helping our clients implement their own decarbonisation strategies. Our aim for 2030 is to help our clients avoid 45Mt of CO2eq emissions a year, which is more than double the 20Mt of CO2eq emissions avoided in 2020. This strategy is based on our capacity to design and implement decarbonisation and energy transition engineering roadmaps to help cities, industry and business reduce their carbon emissions and honour their commitments.
« The alignment of ENGIE’s strategy, purpose and carbon ambitions is critical for our future success and provides a clear trajectory to our global teams. »
Catherine MacGregor, Chief Executive Officer, ENGIE
Concrete solutions to achieve decarbonisation targets
During the 12th Climate Week, Catherine MacGregor will take part in a round table discussion alongside Dr Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, and Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme. This will be the opportunity to explain our own Net Zero Carbon roadmap: withdrawal from coal in Europe by 2025 and worldwide by 2027, increase in renewable energy production capacity to reach 50 GW by 2025 and 80 GW by 2030, additional capacity of 8 GW in distributed infrastructures to reach 32 GW of low-carbon distributed energy infrastructures by 2025…
It will also provide the opportunity to present a brand-new ENGIE’s Ellipse offer, world’s most comprehensive carbon intelligence platform on the market. This platform can be integrated in our clients' existing digital ecosystems to help them track progress of their decarbonisation actions in real time and on a global scale, through smart data analysis. Multinational corporations like Starbucks Coffee Company have already started using it.
Climate Week is off to a great start!
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Key figure
45% of greenhouse gas emissions in 2019 came from the energy sector (3). Energy companies like ENGIE are therefore the most prominent players in decarbonisation, as they provide solutions to reduce both their own emissions and those of their clients.
At ENGIE IMPACT, over 100 experts in energy, water, carbon footprint and waste management and 200 strategic business consultants support more than 1,000 clients worldwide, 25% of them Fortune 500 companies, across over one million sites in the industrial and tertiary sectors.