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Road to Paris 2015:
Novozymes' position on climate change

Rallying for Climate Change ActionNovozymes supports an international agreement between governments on climate change, which seeks to limit global temperature increases to 2°Celsius, above pre-industrial levels.The Company believes that an effective agreement at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris (COP 21) would drive the world towards a low carbon future, and include:

Published 8 years ago | About a 5 minute read

Rallying for Climate Change Action

Novozymes supports an international agreement between governments on climate change, which seeks to limit global temperature increases to 2°Celsius, above pre-industrial levels.

The Company believes that an effective agreement at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris (COP 21) would drive the world towards a low carbon future, and include:

Stable Pricing for Carbon: Underpinned by effective legislative or market-based mechanisms to create stability, based on national circumstances
Public-private collaborations: Incentives for, especially related to research, development and deployment, and the diffusion of low carbon technologies
Robust policy frameworks for private investments to decarbonize the global economy
Financial and technical assistance to enable all countries to transition to a low-carbon sustainable model of economic growth, while achieving poverty alleviation, sustainable energy for all, and natural resource management
A clear role for business – and other stakeholders – on implementing and reviewing INDCs, capacity building, adaptation, finance and investment, mitigation and other areas – including but not limited to Work Stream 2 and voluntary actions under the Lima Paris Action Plan, also considering the recent UN 2030 Development Agenda and including business in preparing for the entry into force of the Paris outcomes;

Novozymes’ Commitment to Climate Change

Addressing Climate change is well-integrated in its business strategy. Novozymes has been recognized as a global corporate leader for climate action as its biosolutions enable climate change mitigation across the value chain. Furthermore, Novozymes has a strong tradition of integrated reporting and is committed to transparently disclosing its climate change impacts.

Mitigating climate change impacts across the value chain

Novozymes believes that a transition towards a biobased economy that relies on renewable biological resources can assist the planet in being more resource efficient and tackle climate change. Its biosolutions typically offer customers reduced CO2 emissions due to lower energy, water, raw material and chemical consumption compared with conventional technologies.

Novozymes measures how its biosolutions contribute to more sustainable business practices, and since 2004, has used lifecycle assessment (LCA) studies to assess the environmental impact of new and existing biological solutions from cradle to grave. These findings are shared publicly, and Novozymes works closely with customers to help them realize and demonstrate emission reductions within their own operations.

By 2020, Novozymes aims to save 100 million tons of CO2e annually through customers’ application of its products. In 2014, Novozymes’ customers avoided 60 million tons of CO2e emissions by applying its products, equivalent to taking 25 million cars off the road.

Additionally, Novozymes strengthened its commitment to sustainable sourcing to address deforestation and climate change risks in its supply chain. By 2020, Novozymes seeks to ensure that 100% of our directly sourced agricultural raw materials do not come from locations that contribute to further deforestation.

Lowering Novozymes’ operational carbon footprint

Novozymes’ has invested heavily to improve productivity and reduce the carbon footprint of its production. Since 2009, Novozymes has decoupled absolute CO2e emissions from business growth, and improved CO2 efficiency by 18 percentage points. These improvements have been driven by two key factors – improvements in energy efficiency and investment in renewable energy.

Between 2009 and 2014, Novozymes implemented 188 energy-saving projects across its global production sites, resulting in emission reductions of approximately 100,000 tons of CO2e. In 2015, Novozymes set a new target to further improve its energy efficiency by 30% by 2020, compared with a 2014 baseline.

In terms of renewable energy investment, Novozymes currently sources 23% of its energy mix from renewables, and since 2011, 100% of its electricity in Denmark from Horns Rev II, one of the world’s largest wind farms. In 2015, Novozymes also committed to sourcing 30% of its global energy consumption from renewable sources by 2020.

Transparent climate disclosure

Novozymes was the first company in the world to publish an integrated annual report in 2002. The company’s environmental reporting includes independently audited, verified and assured data on greenhouse gas emissions from its operations, as well as estimates of emissions avoided by customers’ application of its products.

Since 2007, Novozymes has responded to the CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project). In 2015, Novozymes received a high CDP score of 100 A-, which puts us among the top 5% of companies globally The company retained its position at the top of the Nordic Climate Disclosure Leadership Index for a second year.

Novozymes has long been recognized as an industry leader in the Biotechnology sector of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. In 2014, Novozymes was included in the new and more competitive Chemicals sector, and was among the top 3 percentile of sustainability leaders.

Enabling a Low Carbon Future

With momentum building towards a global climate change agreement in Paris in 2015, Novozymes seeks to be an enabler of the low-carbon economy of the future. Novozymes is actively engaging in global discussions and partnerships with key stakeholders on a number of specific climate change issues.

On carbon pricing, Novozymes is a leading member of the UN Global Compact Caring for Climate initiative, and at the UN Climate Summit 2014 in New York, Novozymes was recognized as a Carbon Pricing Champion. Novozymes supports the UNGC Business Leadership Criteria for Carbon Pricing, which entails putting an internal price on carbon, engaging in responsible policy advocacy, based on national circumstances. Subsequently, Novozymes was invited to join the C4C Business and Investors Working Group on Carbon Pricing, whose mandate is to drive leadership on carbon pricing, and to encourage wider adoption of the business leadership criteria ahead of COP21.

On low carbon technology partnerships, Novozymes is partnering with the World Business Council on Sustainable Development’s Low Carbon Technology Partnerships initiative, which aims to scale up the development and diffusion of low-carbon technologies and business solutions. It will also identify the barriers that currently prevent solutions from being scaled up, and will formulate clear policy recommendations for each technology. The company is actively participating in two key workstreams - Climate Smart Agriculture and Low Carbon Fuels.

More broadly, with the inter-linkages between climate change and sustainable development, Novozymes is also actively engaged with International Chamber of Commerce and its leadership of global business in support of the 2030 Development Agenda.