Kingspan Group has joined over 370 companies worldwide in committing to the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The initiative is a partnership between the World Resource Institute, the World Wildlife Fund, CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) and the United Nations Global Compact, and looks to support participating companies to determine how much they must cut their emissions to prevent the worst impacts of climate change.

Kingspan is committed to achieving Net Zero Energy (NZE) status by 2020, and by 2017 renewable energy accounted for 69% of Kingspan’s usage. To support this NZE commitment Kingspan is joining the SBTi initiative to target an absolute 10% reduction of emissions by 2025 off the base year of 2017 (reducing Scope 1* and Scope 2* GHG emissions) The company is also committing to reduce absolute emissions from purchased goods and services, business travel, transport and distribution, and end-of-life treatment of sold products by 10% by 2025 (Scope 3 GHG emissions*).

Kingspan will continue to drive energy efficiency improvements and increase renewable energy usage throughout its operations while extending the scope of its emissions reduction programme to drive improvements throughout its supply chain.

SBTi provides companies with a clearly defined pathway to future-proof business growth by specifying how much and how quickly they need to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The targets must be in line with the level of decarbonisation required to keep global temperature increase below 2 degrees Celsius, consistent with the goals that 195 countries signed up to at the 2015 Paris Climate Conference. Other companies signed up to the Science Based Targets Initiative include Coca-Cola, Dell, GlaxoSmithKline and Tesco.

Gene Murtagh, CEO of Kingspan, said: “At Kingspan, we are dedicated to sustainable business practise, from our products, to our processes and our people, which is why we are delighted to sign up to the Science Based Targets Initiative. This provides measurable targets for our business to achieve and will ensure that we continue to match our words with actions that make a real difference”

Kingspan is also one of 114 companies to make the CDP “A List” in 2017 and 2016, a recognition of the progress the company has made in addressing environmental issues. CDP, formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project, is the international investor led not-for-profit that measures environmental impact of thousands of companies around the world.

At part of its Net Zero Energy initiative, Kingspan has achieved the following:

• 77% reduction in carbon intensity
• 34.5 GWh on-site energy generation
• 38% reduction in the Group’s energy costs
• 69% of all energy used by the group is renewable
• 31% reduction in the Group’s energy intensity

*The GHG Protocol Corporate Standard classifies a company’s GHG emissions into three ‘scopes’. Scope 1 emissions are direct emissions from owned or controlled sources. Scope 2 emissions are indirect emissions from the generation of purchased energy. Scope 3 emissions are all indirect emissions (not included in scope 2) that occur in the value chain of the reporting company, including both upstream and downstream emissions https://ghgprotocol.org/sites/default/files/standards_supporting/FAQ.pdf