Greenhouse gases

In 2015, we reduced CO₂ emissions from energy by 4% per tonne of production vs 2014, showing consistent progress towards our 2020 target.

We also reduced absolute emissions compared to 2014. Our absolute reduction of 1,015,000† tonnes remains significantly below our 2008 baseline.

We continued to reduce energy use: by 4.4% per tonne of production in 2015 and by 23% since 2008.

In 2015 we announced a new ‘carbon positive’ target through which we will: source all our electricity purchased from the grid from renewable sources by 2020; eliminate coal from our energy mix by 2020; and source 100% of total energy across all manufacturing operations from renewable energy by 2030. This supersedes our previous target of sourcing 40% of our energy across our operations from renewable sources by 2020. All our sites in Europe, the US and Canada purchase grid electricity from certified renewable sources; in 2015 we met 28% of our global energy needs from renewable sources.

* Our new target supersedes our previous target of sourcing 40% of our energy across our operations from renewable sources by 2020.

^† Independently assured by PwC

Liquid laundry detergents have a lower greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint than powders. We are driving market development through liquids: we grow faster in liquids wherever powders, bars and liquids are present. 

Many of our liquids are now sold in concentrated form. They also provide great cleaning performance at lower temperatures. 

We are also increasing the number of unit dose washes in the form of capsules which mean consumers cannot over or under dose. 

We continue to lead the industry in developing lower impact powders by removing or reducing phosphate and zeolite – key components with high GHG impact. We have now reached a 90% reduction in the global use of phosphates across our laundry powders, resulting in lower GHG emissions of up to 50% per single consumer use. 

We are also improving our packaging to reduce emissions by making it lightweight and using refill packs.

¹ In PwC’s assurance of this target (published in March 2014), they were able to assure that we had reduced GHG by 7% in our laundry products, based on data from our automated 2010 baseline. However, PwC did not review the 2008-2009 data when a substantial part of this reformulation took place to enable us to reach 15% by the end of 2012.

While we have achieved a 22% improvement in CO2 efficiency since 2010, we made little progress during 2015. 

We faced many challenges in 2015 and meeting our 2020 commitment remains ambitious. We are continuing to build on the strong foundations we have in place. Through innovation and developing bottom-up carbon reduction projects, we will share best practices to ensure we build efficiency into our transportation logistics.

We are increasingly using non-road forms of transport such as rail and sea to move goods. For journeys still undertaken by road, we are investing in liquefied natural gas (LNG) as an alternative fuel, conducting trials around the world. In 2015 we established a Unilever-led consortium of companies and third-party logistics providers in Europe, Connect2LNG, with an ambition to build five LNG fuelling stations to support our commitment to use alternative fuels in the future.

¹ Cumulative improvement since 2010 is measured across our top 14 countries; annual improvement is measured in more than 50 countries.

The climate-friendly hydrocarbon (HC) refrigerants we use in our freezers have a negligible global warming potential compared to previously used hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). The freezers are also around 10% more energy efficient. By the end of 2015, we had purchased around 2 million freezers using natural refrigerants.

We continue to roll out climate-friendly HC freezers and to make our freezers more energy efficient. In 2015, we started rolling out the latest technologies, which can reduce energy use by over 50% (versus our 2008 baseline). We are also working on the next generation of freezers with energy savings of up to 60% and investigating the use of renewable energy, such as solar, to power our cabinets. 

We continue to work with industry to promote more environmentally-friendly freezers. Via Refrigerants, Naturally! we advocated a ban on the damaging HFCs from many commonly-used types of freezers in Europe, which comes into effect from 2022.

We have set a challenging 2020 target to reduce energy consumption at our in-scope sites. Achieving it will require a combination of local site efficiency improvements, increased office density and a focus on the largest energy consuming sites. Since 2010 we have reduced energy purchased per occupant by 27%. 

We achieved a 6% reduction in energy consumption per occupant in 2015. Contributing factors included the move by several offices to more efficient facilities, the continued effectiveness of our PC power management tool and a switch from oil to gas at one of our more energy intensive sites.

By the end of 2011, we had exceeded our target to implement advanced video conferencing facilities in over 30 countries.

Our advanced video conferencing system, Video Presence, is used for over 950 meetings a month across Unilever offices worldwide. This is substantially reducing our need to travel to meetings, and our CO₂ emissions. It delivers clear benefits such as cost and time savings for the business and cuts down on tiring travel for our employees. To further reduce our GHG employee travel impacts, we have introduced messages on the benefits of using Video Presence when employees use our travel booking system to book flights. This encourages employees to travel only when necessary.