Sustainability has been an integral part of our corporate strategy for several years. We have implemented key measures and achieved major progress towards sustainability in our core business, our financing and our integrated reporting. We are a longstanding member and supporter of relevant sustainability initiatives and are in dialogue with all internal and external stakeholder groups.
Sustainability concept and organisation
We will more consistently benchmark our future decisions and investments against sustainability criteria and align our growth accordingly. EnBW is thus taking a clear stance, even though we have been aligned towards sustainability since we began remodelling the company in 2013, for example through our investment in renewable energies and electricity grids. Now is the right time to explicitly adopt a holistic concept.Sustainability concept and programme
Our concept of sustainability is creating economic, environmental and social added value for customers, shareholders, the workforce, business partners and society – today and in the future. We associate corporate sustainability with responsibility in all our activities. This makes sustainability integral to our corporate strategy.
Like the EnBW 2020 Strategy before it, the EnBW 2025 Strategy embodies a comprehensive stakeholder approach. It features specific financial and non-financial targets for the economic, environmental and social dimensions of sustainability. With our EnBW 2025 Strategy, we are transforming from a traditional energy group into a sustainable and innovative infrastructure provider. As well as charting a new horizon on our growth journey, our strategy places clear emphasis on sustainability. Our augmented sustainability agenda includes a new 25-point plan for the three dimensions of environmental, economic and social responsibility. Every future decision and every future investment has to measure up against sustainability criteria.
25-point sustainability plan
In October 2020, we launched a 25-point plan with the central goal of making EnBW climate-neutral by 2035. This, combined with the exit from coal, permanently embeds sustainability in our corporate DNA. Among other things, it means that all investment decisions have to meet sustainability criteria.
EnBW first embarked on the road to sustainability with the EnBW 2020 Strategy in 2013, and since then has radically transformed the generation portfolio. Most recently, the Group delivered flagship projects for the energy transition with the EnBW Hohe See and Albatros offshore wind farms and Germany’s first subsidy-free, large-scale photovoltaic power plant in Brandenburg.
Sustainability management: organisation
Sustainability management at EnBW is part of the “Corporate Development, Strategy & Energy Management” department, which develops and addresses central sustainability issues. This is where central sustainability topics are developed and dealt with, and where Board of Management submissions are prepared.
The Sustainability Team is the central point of contact and driver for sustainability issues throughout the Group, serving functional units, business units, subsidiaries and associates.
A CSR Committee comprising relevant heads of department (Environmental Protection, Risk Management, Controlling, etc.), further develops central sustainability topics. A control process ensures a regular exchange and close liaison between the sustainability team and areas from the functional and core business units (e.g. renewable energies, grids, sales).
Our contribution to the UN Sustainable Development Goals
Our business activities and projects contribute most of all to the following four SDGs:
Our business activities and projects also contribute to the following five further SDGs:
Quality education (SDG 4), Gender equality (SDG 5), Clean water and sanitation (SDG 6), Decent work and economic growth (SDG 8), Responsible consumption and production (SDG 12).