Climate change is arguably one of the most urgent challenges facing our planet. Decarbonisation calls for a comprehensive structural transformation cutting across all sectors of the economy, all of society and almost all areas of life. This also determines the way forward for EnBW in its business activities.

EnBW is committed to actively supporting the Paris Climate Agreement and the resulting decarbonisation targets for the EU and Germany. Achieving the German climate protection targets involves all stages of the electricity and gas value chains in which EnBW is active, from switching generation away from fossil fuels and towards renewable sources such as wind and solar power to expansion of the grid infrastructure, and all the way through to customer-focused areas such as energy efficiency, e-mobility and energy services for households.

In 2013, we began a process of systematically transforming and realigning our portfolio, with a corporate strategy increasingly focused on sustainability. Even before the German Coal Phase-out Act, we voluntarily parted with about 40 % of our carbon-intensive generating capacity, for both environmental and economic reasons. We have transformed a power plant portfolio that previously consisted mainly of conventional generation into a portfolio that is already planned to consist of equal shares of thermal and renewable generating capacity by 2025.

Continuing our sustainability program from 2020 marks the next step in our corporate strategy, which has increased the focus on sustainability since 2013. We have set ourselves the goal of climate neutrality by 2035 at the latest. By this we mean net neutrality in relation to our Scope 1 and 2 emissions. Scopes 1 and 2 relate to direct emissions from electricity and heat generating assets (Scope 1) and emissions from electricity grid transmission losses (Scope 2). Underscoring this climate neutrality target, EnBW additionally committed to the verification and development of science-based climate targets by joining the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) in October 2021. In making this commitment, EnBW also pledged to develop reduction targets for Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions within 24 months. Scope 3 emissions are notably generated in the gas business (gas procurement and gas combustion at end customers). As part of the SBTi process, we will derive the remaining greenhouse gas budgets for all scopes.In 2021, Netze BW plans to become one of the first distribution grid operators in Germany to achieve climate neutrality.