Ready to Decarbonize?
Following a year marked by extreme climate events and the latest IPCC report, published at the beginning of August, Climate Week, which runs from September 20th to 26th, sets a very clear goal: to step up decarbonization on a global scale. Governments, businesses, experts and NGOs are in New York to share their solutions. Ever faithful to the event, ENGIE was represented by CEO, Catherine MacGregor. The aim is to show that effective solutions already exist, and to step up their rollout. Let’s get it done!
Climate Week, the PLACE TO ACT
Organized 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 have found to limit the consequences of global warming is to reduce CO2 emissions by 45% by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
Decarbonization: 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 specializing in decarbonization, think they are on the right track. It is indeed a difficult task. First, a realistic roadmap must be defined. Next, all decarbonization 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 decarbonization 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 decarbonization 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 decarbonization and energy transition engineering roadmaps to help cities, industry and business reduce their carbon emissions and honor 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 decarbonization targets
During the 12th Climate Week, Catherine MacGregor took 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 was 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 also provided 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 decarbonization 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!
To follow this great climate event, you can tune in here.
