Vodafone committed to reducing the company’s global carbon emissions to net zero by 2040.
Vodafone, the second largest telecom operator in the world, said it aims to reduce the company’s global carbon emissions to net zero by 2040.
Vodafone will eliminate all carbon emissions from its own activities and from energy it purchases and uses by 2030.
Vodafone also pledged that it will halve carbon emissions from Scope 3 sources, including joint ventures, all supply chain purchases, the use of products it has sold and business travel by 2030.
Vodafone will have eliminated Scope 3 emissions completely by 2040 – bringing forward by ten years Vodafone’s original 2050 ambition to reach ‘net zero’ across its full carbon footprint.
Vodafone Group CEO Nick Read said: “We have pledged to become fully ‘net zero’ by 2040 and the Science Based Targets initiative has confirmed that our 2030 carbon targets are in line with the most ambitious goal of the Paris Agreement.
Past targets
In 2019, Vodafone committed to purchasing all electricity from renewable sources, halving its environmental footprint by 2025 and reusing, reselling or recycling 100 percent of its network waste, supporting the move towards a more circular economy.
By no later than July 2021, Vodafone’s European network will be powered by 100 percent renewable electricity – creating a Green Gigabit Net for customers across 11 markets that will grow sustainably using only power from wind, solar or hydro sources.
In July 2020, Vodafone also announced an ambitious new target to help business customers who use its services reduce their own carbon emissions by a cumulative total of 350 million tonnes globally over 10 years between 2020 and 2030.
In September 2020, Vodafone became one of the first global companies to announce it would assess supplier commitments to the environment, diversity and inclusion when they tender for new work, with a supplier’s purpose accounting for 20 percent of the evaluation criteria for a Request For Quotation (RFQ).
Vodafone’s updated RFQ process now examines whether suppliers have environmental policies to address carbon reduction, renewable energy, plastic reduction, circular economy and product lifecycle.
In May 2019, Vodafone issued its first €750 million green bond to finance or refinance projects to help meet the company’s environmental objectives, subsequently reporting which projects were eligible under the use of proceeds and how they were selected.
