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Launched in 2020, our Climate & Nature Fund is a commitment to invest €1 billion in meaningful climate, nature, and resource efficiency projects, to transform the way our products are made and reach end of life.
The projects supported by the fund aim to help Unilever progress towards its goal to improve the health of the planet, including reaching net zero by 2039, while also driving growth and increasing resilience. Finally, it is an ambition to create an impact-led investment platform set up to drive collaboration with partners and co-financers to scale solutions beyond our value chain. By the end of 2024 our total commitments were €0.7 billion.
At Unilever, we believe that sustainability and value creation go hand in hand. The Climate & Nature Fund therefore invests in fighting climate change, protecting nature and acting as a catalyst for value creation for Unilever and its partners.
We have defined four key driving principles which underpin the way we operate and how we assess sustainable investment opportunities under the Climate & Nature Fund:
Seeking environmental and social impact at scale
Many of the climate and nature challenges we face are not unique to our business but are experienced across our industry. Therefore, we are choosing projects that help drive change at system level, through strategic partnerships that benefit our business, people, and planet.
Fostering partnerships across public and private sectors
Bringing new thinking into our company is essential to drive disruption and deliver the step changes that are required to address the challenges of climate change and nature degradation. We recognise that our impact priorities are diverse and achieving them will require collaboration with a broad range of organisations such as suppliers, co-financers, and project developers, as well as NGO partners and academia. Partners working with us through the Climate & Nature Fund are experts in their fields and can help us seize opportunities via our brands.
Providing flexible financing mechanisms adapted to project needs
Through the Climate & Nature Fund, we have the flexibility to use different forms of investment, such as equity and project finance. We are also using co-finance partnerships, such as the Rimba Collective, with the aim of unlocking ambitious and collaborative action beyond our value chain. This flexibility means that our brands have the opportunity to fund a diverse range of programmes, delivering benefits to our consumers, business, and planet.
Creating value for our business
Through the Climate & Nature Fund, we hope to deliver positive environmental impact and business benefits. Therefore, each project is evaluated for its capacity to create value.
The Climate & Nature Fund wants to invest to drive systemic change and transform our value chains. Working closely with our business groups, we have identified seven sustainable investment themes that can unlock many of our sustainability challenges.
Securing alternative ingredients by unlocking and scaling new sustainable and natural feedstocks is critical to our sustainability plans and will help us to evolve and future-proof our portfolio, by diversifying our supply chains while offering consumers more sustainable products.
Carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) can enable a circular approach to the use of carbon. We hope that investment in CCU can help us achieve our greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction targets by reducing the GHG intensity of some key chemical ingredients that contribute to our Scope 3 GHG emissions For example, soda ash made from CO2 captured through CCU can be used as an ingredient in our laundry powders.
Investing in biotechnologies can help us diversify our sourcing of carbon and reduce the GHG intensity of some of our key chemical ingredients. For instance, it has enabled us to replace the petrochemical-based surfactants in our Quix hand dishwash with Rhamnolipids, a biosurfactant made using sugar, as the largest raw material. It can also help us develop new ingredients that make our products more efficient. For example, a laundry capsule that delivers the same result at a lower temperature has lower GHG emissions associated with its use.
Plastic is often the lowest carbon footprint option to package our goods compared to other materials but is frequently ending up in our environment. We are working to unlock plastic alternatives and improve recycling infrastructure to ensure our technically recyclable packaging can actually be recycled in the markets where it is sold.
Animal derived products, such as dairy, are a key ingredient for many of our brands. Methane emissions from agriculture, mostly from ruminant digestion and manure, are now equivalent to 42% of human-caused methane emissions.
We hope that investments and partnerships in non-animal-derived alternatives will help us to progress towards our ambition of reaching net zero emissions across our value chain by 2039.
Agriculture, land use, and deforestation together represent the second-largest source of global GHG emissions and are the primary driver of biodiversity loss. The destruction of nature is already posing real and significant risks to communities and economies through flooding and agricultural yield decline. We believe that the only solution is systemic change.
We are seeking projects that transform agricultural systems and protect and regenerate nature beyond our value chain.
Our target is to achieve 100% absolute reduction in Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions (vs 2015), but, most of the energy consumption in our value chain happens beyond our factory walls. Through the Climate & Nature Fund we will help ensure that the actors in our value chain most responsible for these emissions can access the financing required to transform their operations. A global transition to renewable energy is critical for achieving our net zero ambition.
An initiative funded through the Climate & Nature Fund, Unilever has launched its first regenerative agriculture project in the UK, working with farms that grow ingredients used in Colman’s products.
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An initiative funded through the Climate & Nature Fund, Unilever has launched its first regenerative agriculture project in the UK, working with farms that grow ingredients used in Colman’s products.
The project will initially trial the application of regenerative agriculture practices across mustard and mint farms around Norwich and Peterborough over four-years, including mustard farms which have supplied Colman’s products for over 200 years.
Through the Climate & Nature Fund, Knorr is investing in 50 projects focused on regenerative agriculture practices.
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Through the Climate & Nature Fund, Knorr is investing in a series of 50 new projects which focus on regenerative agriculture practices to enhance and protect key ingredients. As well as improving biodiversity, soil health and benefiting farmer livelihoods, Knorr estimates that these projects can reduce GHG emissions and water use by around 30%.
An example of one of these projects is the use of satellite data and digital sensors to help tomato farmers in the south of Spain optimise their water use and improve soil health and yields through cover cropping.
Ben & Jerry’s is shaping the future of dairy, using the Climate & Nature Fund to develop a potentially game-changing initiative.
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Ben & Jerry’s is investing in a potentially game-changing initiative that aims to halve the GHG emissions produced by 17 dairy farms by 2025. The pilot uses new technologies to reduce emissions from cow (ruminant) digestion and manure. The initiative also locks away carbon through adapting regenerative agriculture practices to grow feed crops and improve soil health.
Learnings from this initiative will be used by other brands and suppliers to develop scalable ways of making dairy farming less carbon intensive.
Unilever is a founding partner of the Regenerative Agriculture Fund to ensure that the transition to regenerative agriculture happens at scale.
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Through the Climate & Nature Fund, Unilever is a founding partner of the Regenerative Agriculture Fund (RAF), alongside AXA and Tikehau Capital. The RAF’s mission is to ensure that the transition to regenerative agriculture can happen at scale. Each co-founder has committed to investing €100 million, with an aim to raise a further €700 million, bringing the RAF’s total investment to €1 billion. All investments made by the RAF will have an objective to generate a long-term, positive impact on atmospheric carbon levels, ecosystem biodiversity, and water management using tools such as land restoration and regenerative agriculture.
We are scaling our efforts with our brands through partnerships such as the Rimba Collective, of which we are a founding member.
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Unilever has joined other major organisations in a $68 million fund raised by Lestari Capital to steward the conservation and restoration of forests and build more sustainable palm-oil supply chains.
“By linking conservation funding directly with company operations, it has the potential to be a game-changer for forest protection and restoration.” (Lestari Capital).
For Earth Day 2023, Eric Soubeiran, Managing Director of the Climate & Nature Fund, was interviewed by youth activist and biologist Swetha Stotra Bhashyam.
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