By Elizabeth Kelleher
SAP’s latest sustainability update shows that its worldwide CO2 emissions have decreased from 120 kilotonnes to 115 kilotonnes since first quarter 2010.
Although SAP has experienced a resurgence in business travel following the GFC, the company reduced its overall carbon footprint in the second quarter of 2010 by reducing energy consumption and increasing the purchase of renewable electricity.
SAP vice president for sustainability Scott Bolick, who was recently in Australia for the second meeting of SAP ANZ’s Sustainability Executive Advisory Council, said compensating air travel needs is a crucial part of SAP’s plan to keep emissions below 460 kilotonnes in 2010.
“This year we made investments in telepresence systems to reduce travel,” said Bolick. “We’re really trying to encourage people to leverage remote technology rather than getting on a plane. We’ll make other investments as well as we go forward, but the telepresence system really is helping us with that 25 to 30 per cent of our carbon that’s related to flights.”
SAP’s objective of staying below 460 kilotonnes of emissions in 2010 is part of an aggressive commitment to reduce total carbon emissions to the year-2000 levels of 275 kilotonnes per year by 2020. Bolick acknowledges that SAP’s target of 275 kilotonnes is ambitious, but says that it will ultimately deliver bottom line benefits.
“We’re building a model that gets us to where we need to be by 2015 and then on top of that developing an investment plan so we can make the appropriate investment,” said Bolick.
“When you look at carbon, you’ve got to be able to look five years forward because when you’re looking at going beyond a behavioural change, there are CapEx and OpEx decisions that have to be made.”
“Our target is ambitious but we also believe that it’s going to give us incredible insight in terms of our operations and in terms of how we can help our customers,” said Bolick.
“It’s also going to give us tremendous bottom line improvements. We are marching down that path and will present our five year plan to our Executive Sustainability Council at the end of November.”
Bolick said SAP ANZ’s Sustainability Executive Advisory Council is an important forum for SAP customers to exchange ideas.
“We find is there is a lot of applicability in terms of how you begin to think about engaging with your stakeholders, how you begin to think about reporting and how you begin to think about performance management internally,” he said.
“The goal of the councils is to bring practitioners together, let them exchange ideas and in doing so push forward with sustainability performance across all the companies that are being involved. We believe that if we can do that successfully, that can add up as a strength in terms of the balance sheet and the financial performance,” said Bolick.
“[Sustainability] is just not about improving your environmental and societal performance, which is important, but it’s about your bottom line.”
