Neckarsulm, 09 August 2022 – Bechtle AG today introduced its Climate Protection Strategy 2030, laying out concrete objectives and measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and achieve climate neutrality, i.e. net-zero carbon emissions, by 2030. The targets defined in the Climate Protection Strategy 2030 cover direct and indirect CO2 emissions as well as upstream and downstream value chains and complement the Bechtle Sustainability Strategy 2030 launched last year with a three-pronged approach of avoidance, reduction and compensation.
The Bechtle Climate Protection Strategy 2030 is an integral part of the IT company’s sustainability initiatives, and was developed in line with the objectives of the Paris Climate Accords. “It is not just a question of corporate responsibility to ensure sustainable business practices, but it is also a commitment to our society to do everything we can to mitigate global warming,” says Dr Thomas Olemotz, CEO, Bechtle AG. At the heart of the strategy lies the ambition to achieve net-zero carbon emissions across the group by 2030, largely through reductive measures and backed by avoiding and offsetting emissions through certified climate protection projects.
Reductions in CO2 emissions along the value chain follow the approaches of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol which differentiates emissions into three distinct scopes. Accordingly, the objective is to reduce scope 1 (company buildings and vehicle fleet) and scope 2 (energy procured for use in-house) emissions by 60 per cent each, whereas scope 3 emissions related to upstream and downstream values chains are to be reduced by 30 per cent by 2030.
This ambitious roadmap aligns with the reduction targets of the Science Based Target Initiative (SBTI), which has seen the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), United Nations Global Compact, World Resources Institute and the World Wide Fund for Nature collaborate since 2015 on setting transparent, comparable and scientifically-based climate targets.
Bechtle began publishing an annual Sustainability Report in 2015 The company is a signatory of the UN Global Compact and the WIN Charta and regularly undergoes EcoVadis sustainability audits.