APC 2015 Annual Report Download - page 75

2015 REGISTRATION DOCUMENT SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC 73
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
2
SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC’S COMMITMENT TOENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE
In 2015, Schneider Electric;
•established a Cloud Services operating model; leveraging its
partners, the Group sustainably grew the consumption of cloud
services and the number of virtual machines in the cloud;
•continued infrastructure transformation across all geographies
including virtualization, consolidation, centralization and
decommissioning of the Group’s servers, storage and associated
infrastructure;
•consolidated various regional/local data centers to a single
outsourced operating model and data center supporting 60,000
users across the Europe, Iberia, South America and Middle East
regions;
•transformed the majority of China IT operations into a single
managed energy effi cient data center, utilizing Schneider
Electric’s IT Business power solutions;
•decommissioned over 1,400 servers globally as part of the
Windows Server Upgrade program;
•continued digitization including increased utilization of new
corporate social media solutions and devices, improving the
Group’s collaboration and communication process while
reducing paper, email exchanges and further leveraging cloud
data storage.
Priorities and initiatives which will signifi cantly contribute to
optimizing the corporate IT i nfrastructure footprint and hence
energy usage over the coming years:
•implementation of a Global Unifi ed Communication Strategy
leveraging the cloud to improve messaging, web conferencing,
audio, video and virtual presence services globally which will
include the decommissioning of our current legacy messaging
servers;
•badge enabled printing, triggering a signifi cant reduction in paper
consumption.
Actions to reduce emissions linked to freight
Target at Group level
From 2012 to end-2014, reduction in CO2 emissions linked to
freight exceeded the target and reached 16% compared to 2011,
thanks primarily to the optimization of long-distance freight modes.
The program has contributed to saving 250,000tons of CO2 and
EUR5.8million since the end of 2011, while the investment required
was close to zero (no special equipment was required, and a
professionalization of the staff on the program was conducted).
As part of the new three-year company program Schneider is On
and the Planet & Society barometer , it has been decided to renew
the CO2 transport emissions reduction program Group-wide for
2015-2017. A goal of a relative reduction in emissions of 3.5%
during the fi rst year was validated, with the target of achieving a
reduction of 10% over three years.
At the end of 2015, the objective of 3.5% was achieved and
surpassed with a reduction of 8.4%. However, this fi gure varies
signifi cantly across the different modes of transport: reduction of
24.5% on long-distance freight (air/sea) and increase of 5.4% on
short-distance freight (road).
See indicators page 114 .
Long- distance freight
Our Air/Sea tool, which determines the standard transport mode
according to an ABC/FMR valuation and inventory usage frequency
analysis, is applied worldwide and helps to be permanently aware
of the best compromise between economic and environmental
constraints .
In 2015, air freight tonnage represented on average 13% of joint
air and sea tonnage, versus 14.3% in 2014. The reduction in CO2
emissions on long-distance freight was 24.5% in 2015 versus 2014.
Local and central initiatives have been conducted in 2015, such as:
•implementation of the manager approval tool to question any
decisions to use air transport, with validation by the only manager
authorized to modify the shipment method; deployment planned
in 2016 in all major shipment centers;
•launch of an optimization program for the fi ll rate of sea transport
containers which will bring about a relative reduction of the
number of containers transported and in turn a decrease in CO2
emissions;
•close collaboration between the Inventory Management teams
and Transport teams to ensure common goals in the reduction
of air transport;
•monthly monitoring of the Air/Sea ratio by region now
incorporating the ITB activity which will lead to in a change in
scope.
Short- distance freight
At the end of 2015, CO2emissions on road transport had increased
5.4%.
The main initiatives launched in the previous program must be
reinforced and amplifi ed:
•accelerate the consolidation of volumes for some providers of
strategic logistics services equipped with transport optimization
functionalities; a platform in Europe implemented, two very
advanced projects in North America and South America;
•in some regions (China, India) which cannot benefi t from
consolidation involving several providers of strategic logistics
services, deployment of the Oracle OTM tool (transport
management system) to optimize delivery rounds and the truck
load factor .
Participation in several key initiatives
Schneider Electric is actively involved in the French Shippers’
Association, where it actively participates in the Environment
Commission and is strongly committed to sustainable development
in transport.
Discussions are ongoing with an external partner concerning the
industrialization and automation of the report on CO2 emissions
from transport in Europe.