Reaching 100% renewable electricity across five continents is a significant step towards our target to become a carbon neutral company before 2030.
As part of our efforts to reach that goal, we have been working with partners around the world to generate renewable electricity at our own sites, with solar power currently in use at Unilever facilities in 18 countries. In fact, we now have 16 manufacturing sites that are completely carbon neutral in their energy use.
Marc Engel, Chief Supply Chain Officer at Unilever, says: “The climate emergency is one of the most urgent challenges we’re all facing. Our teams have worked hard to secure renewable energy contracts for our sites across five continents, accelerating the delivery of our 100% renewable energy targets.
“Of course, there is more work to do. But we hope that today’s announcement will inspire further action elsewhere and help prove that it is possible to combat the climate crisis and hold global warming at 1.5° Celsius. Renewable is doable.”
A big contributor to today’s announcement is our investment in energy efficiency programmes – which have led to a reduction in total energy consumption of 28% – and to the halving of carbon emissions per tonne of production since 2008. This has also helped to achieve over €600 million in cumulative cost avoidance.