Reducing greenhouse gas emissions will be one of the most important tasks of the future. Allianz SE, a global financial services provider, plans to reduce its emissions by 20-percent by 2012. Astrid Zwick, who heads the company’s Environmental Management System, explains how.
 | Astrid Zwick, Sustainable Development Manager, Allianz Social Opportunities"The Allianz Climate Strategy demands CO2 emissions reductions of 20 percent by 2012." (Photo: Allianz) |
What is an Environmental Management System (EMS), and why does Allianz need one?
Allianz is claiming leadership in addressing climate change. To do this in a credible way, we also have to apply environmental protection in our own operations. An environmental management system (EMS) helps us save natural resources and reduces our CO2 emissions, which at the same time helps us to reduce our operational costs.
The Allianz Climate Strategy set up in 2005 also demands a global outreach of our EMS to at least 80 percent of all our employees and CO2 emissions reductions of 20 percent by 2012 compared to the base year of 2006.
We started with the international EMS about eight years ago under the umbrella of the sustainable development strategy of Allianz Group. Last year, we enhanced the system, and by now, it covers the 30 biggest Allianz companies worldwide.
How will you reduce CO2 emissions by 20 percent?
Our carbon emissions derive from three principal sources. The biggest source is our energy consumption; energy for heating, cooling, and electricity. Another important source is business travel using airplanes, trains, and corporate cars. The third source is paper consumption. We use a lot of paper for printing and copying. These three sources make up about 99 percent of our carbon footprint. Two minor CO2 sources coming from our operations are waste and water consumption.
We focus on the three main sources in four different ways. First, we have to avoid emissions, for example by printing double-sided. Second, we can reduce our emissions. For business travel, that would mean trying to substitute a trip with telephone calls or a video conference. We now have a pilot project allowing for high-end video conferencing between Munich and Paris, which certainly makes videoconferencing more attractive than with earlier technologies.
The third option is to buy green energy. In several countries, we can already buy energy from wind or small scale hydro power instead of coal fired power plants. From 2009 on, the German group companies will for example buy 100 percent renewable energy. Our Italian company is mainly using hydro power and our colleagues from the UK have also purchased green energy.
What are the most important things that companies and individuals can do to reduce their carbon footprint?
For an individual one recommendation would be to look at what you would do at your own home to reduce your energy bill, and to apply that at the office as well. This ranges from switching off the lights before leaving the office, shutting down the computer, and turning down the heating when you open a window.
The company as a whole can do a lot more to reduce CO2 emissions. About 70 percent of our carbon footprint comes from energy consumption within the Allianz Group. For example, our computer centers are producing a huge amount of waste heat, which can be used for heating. Building with an energy efficient design, such as LEED certified buildings, should be the target when moving to another location.
Allianz companies manage billions of dollars of investments. Do you take these into account as well?
There are plans to investigate the CO2 footprint of our investments. We do this together with our partner, the WWF. This issue is very complex. You have to consider that we still need to do business, but on the other hand we want to become a leader in the climate change debate. Our challenge is how to reconcile both.
Allianz operates in very different countries. Can a one-size-fits-all EMS work?
When we developed the standard baseline for the EMS, we tried to use defined system boundaries. However, we soon found out that some questions of our colleagues could not be solved and we frequently need to develop country specific approaches and standards.
One question was for example whether we include external agents in our system? In some countries, external agents are totally independent, and, thus are outside of our system boundaries. In other countries, these agents sit in Allianz offices adding to our carbon footprint. You can imagine the dilemma we are regularly facing, but in the area of methodologies and measurements a common approach is key to have a sound data base.
Somehow different is the area of emission reduction. Let us take for example our subsidiary Mondial Assistance, the world leader in assistance and travel insurance. Their doctors have to be in place when accidents happen. They can’t just reduce their car travel, especially in emergency cases when a client’s health is at risk.
Basically, every group company has to identify and undertake individual measures to reduce emissions. We can formulate a list of measures to support our colleagues, but a one-size-fits-all EMS does not always work.
How do employees react to such a large-scale project?
I can see two opinions crystallizing out. One group of people is extremely motivated and wants to contribute, and there are others who are quite critical. They ask why a financial service provider should have an environmental management system, because we are not a heavy polluting industry. My answer to this is, as an insurer we are suffering from climate change, thus, we can also help mitigating climate change. The EMS is a fair contribution.
editor: Thilo Kunzemann
publishing date: November 26, 2008
Do you have something interesting to add? Write a comment and discuss this topic with other readers. Comments should be on-topic, non-commercial, and not contain abuse of any kind.
Comment Policy
can't trees be helpful to reduce the global warming
my opinion is apart from doing these things can't we add trees , jungles so that the temperature would come down because earlier also the manager of this thing was jungle or trees so cd't...