International food company Danone has announced ‘Re-Fuel Danone’, a new programme that it hopes will transform the energy footprint of its sites around the world.
The France-based business plans to significantly upweight its renewable energy sources, and reduce the energy footprint of its sites worldwide and make its operations “more agile, energy and cost efficient, resilient and more sustainable”.
Re-Fuel Danone is expected to push the company to combine technological expertise and greener thinking to accelerate decarbonisation across its operations. Part of the new plan will see Danone expand on partnerships with local renewable energy providers to increase energy resilience and create shared value in the communities where it operates, it added.
Targets of the new initiative include improving energy efficiency by 30% by 2025, significantly increasing use of biogas, biomass, solar, and hydrogen, and ensuring 100% of electricity comes from renewable sources and half of all energy comes from renewable sources by 2030.
The Re-Fuel Danone drive also involves the company tackling Scope 1 and 2 emissions, with the aim to reduce them by a minimum of 42% by 2030.
Vikram Agarwal, Danone’s chief operations officer, commented: “Energy is a massive contributor to how we make our category-leading products, but it also has an environmental impact.
“That’s why we are transforming the energy footprint of our sites globally through this energy excellence programme.£
He added: “We will do this under three pillars – energy efficiency, investing in more energy efficient process technology and upweighting renewable energy sources. It will make us more sustainable, more agile, more cost efficient and more resilient, it also adds to how we deliver for our customers and consumers and helps us reconnect performance and purpose, so marks further progress on our strategy to renew Danone.”
Danone – which owns brands such as Activia, Volvic, and Actimel – said the new programme builds on Danone’s work in this area which has seen it now using 68.5% renewable electricity across its sites. Six of its factories around the globe are independently certified as carbon neutral, and over the past 20 years Danone has reportedly reduced its energy usage by 46%.
[Image credit: Green Retail World]
