Energy and climate change

CO₂ emissions have already started to disrupt the climate. As this continues, hotter and drier summers are expected to dry up rivers and jeopardise harvests, leading to increased food prices and economic hardship. Milder and wetter winters will erode soil and cause floods, threatening farming communities and cities. Everybody will be affected by climate change – but the poorest people and countries will suffer the most.

If we are to avoid catastrophic climate change, the earth’s temperature should not increase by more than 2°C. Urgent and extensive action is required by all sectors to achieve this. In 2010, Coca-Cola Hellenic signed the Cancun Communiqué which calls on world leaders to redouble their efforts to achieve a climate deal and pursue an ambitious mitigation strategy.

The private sector has a vital role to play. Through innovation and long-term investments in energy efficiency and low-carbon technologies, business must turn the climate challenge into market opportunities.

We reaffirm our commitment to transforming Coca-Cola Hellenic into a low-carbon business. Carbon management is a strategic priority for the Company and we are already seeing business benefits resulting from ongoing investments in energy efficiency and low carbon technologies.

Understanding our climate risks
Climate change presents significant risks to our business – from rising energy costs to threats to our agricultural supply chain and availability of water. Through innovation and leadership, we aim to convert these risks into opportunities: cost-savings, reputation benefit and competitive advantage to name but a few (see table next page). Our report to the Carbon Disclosure Project discusses these risks and opportunities in detail.

Our approach
As we transform Coca-Cola Hellenic into a low-carbon business, we have committed to take a leadership role. Since much of our business is in developing and emerging markets, we have a responsibility to promote the need for urgent climate action.

We are tackling climate change in the following ways:

• Improving our energy efficiency
• Switching to cleaner energy sources
• Working with others to reduce indirect emissions
• Developing and promoting low-carbon technologies
• Supporting climate adaptation

We aim to reduce total emissions while growing our business. As a founding signatory of the UN Global Compact Caring for Climate platform, we publish a self-assessment of our performance against these requirements on our website.

In the past few years, we have come close to stabilising direct emissions, decoupling energy use from organic growth. Nevertheless, we must still compensate for emissions associated with business acquisitions. By 2020, our goal is to reduce emissions by 25% compared to 2004.

We also lead the European food and drink industry in developing and deploying low-carbon technologies. Coca-Cola   Hellenic was the only non-alcoholic beverage company invited to showcase its CO₂ reduction programme at CSR Europe’s Enterprise 2020 MarketPlace. Our innovative quad-generation CHP programme has also been designated an ‘Official Partner’ of the EC Sustainable Energy Europe campaign.