Siemens has achieved further progress toward meeting its sustainability ambitions. At its Capital Market Day in June 2021, the company set itself ambitious environmental, social and governance (ESG) targets with its new strategic framework DEGREE. In its Sustainability Report for fiscal 2021, Siemens has published information today on its progress toward achieving these targets.

'We're on track to successfully achieve our sustainability targets, and we're driving our ambitions further ahead with our DEGREE framework,' said Judith Wiese, Chief People and Sustainability Officer and member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG. 'Our 360-degree approach puts Siemens' sustainability efforts to work for all our stakeholder groups: customers and investors, our people, communities and the environment. We're proud of our results, but success will need to be proven in the long run - and that's the case for our company as well as society as a whole and for the planet.'

Siemens has made solid progress with respect to its 14 ESG ambitions and has already made substantial headway toward realizing about one-third of them. Advances were made, for example, in providing occupational training to its people, in the ESG requirements for its suppliers and in the share of women in top management.

For the targets of ecodesign and secondary materials - in other words, for the sustainable development of products and the reuse of raw materials in manufacturing - Siemens has now completed the baselining process and can begin from a very good starting position: Today, 26 percent of Siemens' ecodesign standards are already implemented in all of the company's relevant products. With this approach, aspects like ensuring that products are recyclable are taken into consideration right from the design phase. By 2030, the company wants to develop 100 percent of its relevant product families sustainably based on ecodesign requirements. In addition, Siemens intends to intensify purchasing of recycled materials - referred to as 'secondary materials' - for metals and resins and wants to implement the principle of a circular economy. Furthermore, the company is seeking to come as close as possible to zero landfill waste by 2030. In fiscal 2021, 38 percent of the metals that Siemens used to manufacture its products were already purchased from recycled sources.

Siemens also made solid progress in its climate protection efforts. Over the past two years, the company reduced the CO2 emissions from its operations by another 36 percent. In early 2021, the company had set itself new reduction targets that were validated by the Science Based Targets-Initiative (SBTi). In this way, the company wants to make its contribution toward limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Based on the SBTi reduction pathway, Siemens wants to become carbon neutral in its business operations by 2030. By that year, the company also wants to reduce emissions throughout its entire value chain by 15 percent compared to 2019.

In fiscal 2021, Siemens not only abated further emissions in its own operations but also helped its customers do the same in their operations: The technologies from Siemens' Environmental Portfolio enabled the company's customers to abate 88 million tons of CO2 - ten percent more than in fiscal 2020. In addition, by introducing SiGreen to the market, Siemens is launching a new solution that, for the first time, makes it possible to track products' carbon footprint throughout the entire supply chain. In this way, companies can implement targeted reduction measures with quantifiable impact.

To accelerate efforts to protect the climate and resources, Siemens is relying on strategic partnerships. For instance, in 2021, the company became a founding member of the Alliance for Clean Air. In addition, Siemens expanded its strategic partnership with The Biodiversity Consultancy to scientifically assess its biodiversity footprint and supplement its involvement in the area of sustainability.

Siemens has been a leader in international sustainability rankings for more than 20 years. In the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) published on November 12, 2021, for instance, the company was ranked first among its industry peers. In this ranking, Siemens reached a top global position in social and environmental reporting, in innovation and cybersecurity as well as in product- and industry-related environmental protection. Siemens has been included in this ranking every year since 1999, when the index was first published.

Siemens' key sustainability figures are, effective immediately, also available digitally and in a new format to provided users and investors with better opportunities to evaluate them.

(C) 2021 Electronic News Publishing, source ENP Newswire