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AXA's climate strategy has two main objectives: continually reducing CO2 and adapting to climate change. AXA intends to achieve these objectives in its role as insurer, investor, and company, as well as in its role as a member of society. The following video explains how it intends to do so:
As an insurer, this means increasingly offering customers climate-friendly products and services. As an investor, AXA aims to continuously reduce the carbon footprint of its investments. As a company, it educates its employees about climate issues and reduces the emissions of its operating business. And as a social player, AXA enters into partnerships to protect what really matters, such as biodiversity in Switzerland with the Flora Futura initiative.
AXA Switzerland intends to achieve net zero emissions from its business operations by 2025. This means that we prioritize reducing our carbon footprint and offset the residual carbon emissions by supporting projects that use negative emissions technologies to draw the same amount of carbon from the atmosphere and store it over the long term. We are implementing this step by step in order to reach our climate target.
Together with ClimatePartner, we are establishing the source and extent of the carbon emissions that our business generates. We include the carbon output of the 340 sales offices in this calculation. However, the carbon reduction targets and most of the measures do not relate to the sales function. The carbon footprint helps us to identify reduction potential and develop measures.
Carbon footprint of AXA Switzerland 2022
Mobility currently accounts for just over half of carbon emissions. In terms of commuter traffic and business travel, car journeys are responsible for most of the emissions. The climate damage of building energy which accounts for at least 20 percent of the carbon footprint derives mainly from heating buildings. In the IT category, the procurement of electronic equipment such as computer screens or laptops is the main factor. The remaining category comprises carbon emissions generated by working from home as well as paper consumption and waste.
We have set ourselves the target of reducing carbon emissions by 21 percent by 2025 compared to 2019 in terms of energy consumption and business trips. Specifically, this means that we aim to reduce the carbon output generated through the energy consumption of office buildings and the business travel of AXA Switzerland employees (including vehicle fleet) per full-time equivalent from 0.6 tons of CO₂ (2019) to 0.48 tons of CO₂ in 2025. We have also set ourselves the target of reducing IT-related carbon emissions by 21 percent compared to 2020.
By 2025, we also intend to reduce the consumption of office paper and printed matter by 20 percent, the average water consumption by 11 percent and unsorted waste by 10 percent.
As part of our climate strategy and in order to reach our carbon reduction targets, we are developing and continually implementing reduction measures.
We have internal travel guidelines to encourage our employees to travel in an eco-friendly way and to take the train rather than fly or drive. AXA supports the use of public transport, promotes cycle stations and electric charging stations, and it also works together with Mobility as its car-sharing partner. AXA additionally offers financial support or solutions to its employees who travel the most to encourage them to switch to electromobility.
Fiat 500e
Thanks to Smart Working, our employees can work flexibly from home, in the office, or in co-working spaces. This way, many commuting journeys are saved which has a positive impact on climate protection. We also increasingly carrying out customer consultations via video.
As a member of the Zurich Energy Model, AXA has been successfully implementing measures to improve energy efficiency in office buildings since 2010. We are also reducing office spaces and optimizing their usage. As a further contribution against climate change, we are replacing heating systems that use fossil fuels with more environmentally alternatives such as district heating.
Since 2009, AXA has sourced 100% of its electricity from renewable sources, mostly from Swiss hydropower. We also produce our own electricity with photovoltaic systems on our office buildings in Winterthur, Lausanne, and Lugano.
We take responsibility for the remaining carbon emissions of our business by supporting high-value and externally certified climate protection projects in the same quantity. AXA invests in carbon avoidance and reduction projects, but also in projects with negative emissions technologies such as a reforestation project in Uruguay and a Swiss biochar program which stores carbon in the soil for the long term. AXA also uses the carbon dioxide removal service of Climeworks which filters carbon out of the air and stores it securely and permanently underground.
Reforestation project Uruguay
Biochar as carbon storage
Climeworks carbon dioxide removal service
ClimatePartner reviews and certifies the above steps for AXA Switzerland's business. The certification and our contribution to climate protection can be clearly tracked on the related Climate-ID website.
ClimatePartner label
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