For the fifth year, Schneider Electric, the leader in digital transformation of energy management and automation, announces its financial and non-financial results together for 2019 annual results. Each quarter, Schneider Electric publishes 21 indicators from the Schneider Sustainability Impact, measuring progress towards its ambitious sustainability commitments for 2018 to 2020, in line with its COP 21 commitments and United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Following thorough verification by an external independent auditor, Schneider Sustainability Impact reached a 7.77 out of 10 score for Q4 2019, ahead of its 7 out of 10 targets for the end of 2019.
Gilles Vermot Desroches, Sustainability Senior VP at Schneider Electric, commented: "We are now harvesting the fruits of the commitments we made two years ago. The Schneider Sustainability Impact demonstrates that rapid and disruptive changes for a more sustainable world are possible across diverse and complex topics such as Climate, Circular Economy, Health and Equity, Ethics and Development. I am amazed by the commitment of our teams and partners worldwide to contribute to our common goals and I am confident we are on the right path as these collective efforts have been particularly validated by external experts. This year will be a pivotal one for us as we push ourselves to reach an ambitious target and invite stakeholders to help us define new programs for Schneider Sustainability Impact 2021-2025, in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Quarter highlights
Climate:
- The ambition to reduce CO2 intensity of transportation by 10% in 2020 compared to 2017 is on the right path, with 4.13% achieved end 2019. The program, renewed for the third time since 2012 with respective performance of 16% and 10.3% efficiency achieved in 2012-2014 and 2015-2017, is becoming ever more challenging. 2019 performance has notably been achieved through a better ocean container loading factor, and more significantly by reductions in Air Freight and Express versus 2017 in the same period. In Q4 2019, a new reporting platform has been launched, requiring Transport Providers to supply accurate reporting each month on the freight carried for Schneider Electric. The collaborative work to reduce CO2 emissions with the Group’s forwarders will continue, mainly by optimization of the transport footprint and piloting advanced low carbon transportation technologies such as electric and hybrid vehicles. In Brazil for instance, a partnership with DHL has been deployed to use electric vehicles to deliver customer 100 km around the Cajamar distribution center.
Circular economy:
- End 2019, Schneider Electric confirms that 55.2% of sales were realized under the new Green PremiumTM program. In 2019, the main objectives for the Green Premium™ program were to keep products compliant to regulations, extend the scope to include services and solutions, make available the additional environmental attributes in the online product data sheet, develop customer stories that demonstrate the value that Green Premium™ brings to the Group’s customers and to continue identifying the environmental claims for products. A remarkable addition to the Greem PremiumTM portfolio on circular performance is Schneider Electric’s ECOFIT™ service, which helps customers to implement cost effective and responsible methodologies to modernize and retrofit their existing electrical equipment with minimal impact to their day-to-day operations.
Health & Equity:
- Schneider Electric has made significant progress in systematically identifying and addressing pay gaps. By the end of 2019, 99% of employees worldwide are working in a country with commitment and processes in place to achieve gender pay equity. Over the past two years several countries were covered notably those in the Middle East, Africa and South America. Today, the pay equity adjustment process is fully integrated into the annual global salary review. A range of communications and education materials have been developed with over 1,000 leaders and the HR community being trained to make fair and equitable compensation decisions in hiring, promotion and salary review.
Ethics:
- Schneider Electric’s ISO26000 assessments for its strategic suppliers remain one of the key aspects of the Group’s Supply Chain and Procurement led sustainable development strategy. The average score for 1,000+ strategic suppliers in this rating is 54.8/100, up 3.7 points vs 2017, and one of the top performing supply chains measured by the third-party evaluation (Ecovadis). For reference, the average score of companies in Ecovadis database is 43/100, and Schneider’s own score is 80/100. This achievement is due to continued prioritization in the strategic sourcing process and supplier vigilance strategy to continually improve the environmental, labor & human rights, ethics and sustainable procurement aspects of Schneider Electric’s world-class upstream supply chain.
Development:
- In its 8th year of existence, with 180 partners in 80 countries, the Schneider Electric VolunteerIn association registered 11,421 volunteering days thanks to its VolunteerIn global platform. The Foundation delegates played a key role this year, boosting the connection rate on the VolunteerIn platform by 25%. The second edition of Giving Tuesday in December 2019 also played a significant role, as more than 40 countries participated and several initiatives were highlighted by and proposed to Schneider Electric employees all over the world. The countries with the most missions proposed by the employees on the VolunteerIn platform were Brazil, Mexico, USA and France. They are contributing, with China, to more than 60% of our global objective.
Highlights:
- Schneider Electric was ranked among the “Global 100” most sustainable companies by Corporate Knights for the 7th year running, coming 29th overall and first in its category (more than 7,500 companies evaluated);
- Schneider Electric is one of the 22 French companies ranked on the CDP “A-List” - among just 179 other companies - for 8,000+ respondents – for the 9th consecutive year. The Group also secured its place in CDP’s Supplier Engagement Rating Leaderboard (SER);
- Moving forward with its commitment to carbon neutrality, Schneider Electric announces its membership of the EV100 initiative to replace 14,000 company cars with electric vehicles (EV) by 2030;
- Impak Finance, the new independent impact rating agency, has ranked Schneider Electric first in CAC40 for its contribution to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Schneider Electric’s efforts were reflected in other rankings:
- Inclusion in the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index for the 7th consecutive year;
- An AAA ranking with American investment company MSCI, #1 vs largest sector peers;
- First time inclusion in FTSE4GOOD Environmental Leaders Europe 40 index;
- As of December 2019, inclusion in the Euronext Vigeo Eiris World120, Europe120, Eurozone120 and France20 indices thanks to a 65/100 rating;
- An 85/100 score with Sustainalytics, #1 among peers with $36-$51 bn market cap;
- Inclusion in the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index for the 3rd year in a row;
- Prime level rating by ISS-ESG, second in its industry;
- An A- for its second participation in the CDP Water questionnaire.
