A
major milestone in our commitment to climate protection was the conversion of
all our sites worldwide – production facilities as well as offices – to
electricity from renewable energy sources by 2020. We achieved this one year
earlier, already in 2019, by converting our plants in Mexico and Nigeria, as
well as the production site of our recently acquired Coppertone brand in
Cleveland, Tennessee, USA, to
green energy. 100% of all electricity consumed at Beiersdorf offices and
production locations worldwide now originate from renewable sources such as
solar energy, wind energy, and hydropower.
At 8 of our sites – Shanghai, China, Bangkok, Thailand, or Australia, for example – we have installed photovoltaic systems that enable us to cover part of our own electricity requirements fully grid-independently. In 2019 our photovoltaic systems worldwide generated 1,853 MWh of electricity. To make a tangible comparison, according to the German Federal Statistical Office this corresponds to the annual consumption of almost 400 three-person households in Germany. We are currently investigating the use of additional photovoltaic systems at more of our locations to further increase the proportion of solar energy we produce ourselves.
In Germany,
Chile, Spain, and Poland, our production facilities are directly supplied with
electricity from renewable energy sources. In all other countries, direct purchase
is not yet or only partially possible due to local infrastructure restrictions;
for these sites we acquire “International Renewable Energy
Certificates” (I-RECs) when we buy electricity.