Energy management and automation multinational Schneider Electric has announced six long-term commitments to help it achieve its sustainability goals by 2025.

This forms part of its new Schneider Sustainability Impact (SSI) programme, which will be implemented from 2021 to 2025.

The SSI programme embeds environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations into every facet of the company's activities.

“The core of our strategy is to build a sustainable business and company. Customers, employees, partners and investors have never been more focused on ESG considerations than they are now. Schneider has long embraced those issues and we keep raising the bar for ourselves and for our customers and partners,” says Schneider Electric chairperson and CEO Jean-Pascal Tricoire.

“We introduced our first sustainability barometer in 2005. But ESG commitments cannot be a one-off, and we reinforced our commitments every three years. All of us – companies, governments, individuals – can contribute to make the world greener and more inclusive. Our new commitments define the next steps of our contribution," he says.

The SSI is built on six long-term commitments, which are set to deliver on each of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). These commitments are to act for a climate-positive world, to be efficient with resources, to live up to its principles of trust, to create equal opportunities, to harness the power of all generations and to empower local communities.

"Eleven concrete targets, deliverable by 2025, underpin these commitments. And, for the first time, leaders of the more than 100 markets in which Schneider operates will set local targets to address grassroots-level needs in their communities," says Tricoire.

“The ability and willingness to make the world greener and more equitable is not just a moral responsibility – it makes good business sense too. The year 2020 was marked by Covid-19, a string of climate-linked disasters and the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement on climate change, and reinforced the urgency for action.

"It also intensified appetite from our customers to accelerate their own transitions towards a lower-carbon world. Our solutions can help them achieve their goals,” says Schneider Electric chief strategy and sustainability officer Olivier Blum.