#Sustainability

2022-11-17

H&M Group further invests in the decarbonisation of its value chain

The 27th United Nations Climate Change conference (COP27) is the annual milestone for the most influential leaders in climate action from governments, business and the climate community. Working towards its ambition to achieve net-zero by 2040, H&M Group joined the international forum in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt to build momentum for collaborative action and share about the company’s progress and challenges.

"We have been engaged in climate mitigation for years and continuously push ourselves to demonstrate climate leadership within our industry. Our recently strengthened climate goals are verified by the Science Based Targets initiative. We are dedicated to contributing to the limitation of the global temperature increase to 1.5 °C and keeping our climate strategy aligned with the latest science-based target setting frameworks is crucial for us to create impact beyond our own organisation and value chain.”

Leyla Ertur, Head of Sustainability H&M Group

H&M Group set the ambitious goal to reduce the group’s absolute scope 1 and 2 emissions and its scope 3* emissions by 56% respectively by 2030 (from a 2019 baseline). To work towards this goal and to financially support projects to reduce its emissions throughout the whole value chain, H&M Group implemented an annual budget of around SEK 3 billion. The budget will be used for investments to phase out coal and increase the share of more sustainable materials, amongst others.

"Instead of measuring the success of these initiatives by financial gain, we measure effective emission reductions. To turn our company growth, profit and greenhouse gas reduction into equal KPIs is a very ambitious decision that underlines the importance and value of our sustainability work for our business.”

Leyla Ertur, Head of Sustainability H&M Group

H&M Group focuses on investments that further strengthen the availability and usage of renewable energy and fund the innovation and distribution of technology that will allow the group to fully decarbonize its production and logistic operations.

Some of H&M Group’s recent initiatives include:

Green Fashion Initiative

The Green Fashion Initiative will support the company in reducing greenhouse gas emissions across its supply chain, by making funding available to supplying factories to invest in the technologies and processes needed to reduce energy demand and replace fossil fuels across the fashion industry.

Fashion Climate Fund by Apparel Impact Institute

H&M Group is a lead funder of the Fashion Climate Fund, which is designed to drive collective action to tackle fashion’s supply chain emissions. The Fund will help execute foundational supply chain improvements, including transitioning to renewable electricity, improving energy efficiency, eliminating coal in manufacturing, scaling sustainable materials and practices, and accelerating next-gen materials.

Sustainable Supplier Facility

Many suppliers in the apparel sector are struggling with decarbonization due to a lack of funding and adequate technology implementation support. In order to reach beyond our own influence, H&M Group and Guidehouse have initiated a Sustainable Supplier Facility where other brands and investors will be able to co-invest to share the financial responsibility of a project and give further alternatives to support suppliers in their decarbonization journey.

Internal carbon price

A consisting tool within the H&M Group to drive behavioral change within its buying, design and merchandising teams as well as in production and logistics, that steers toward the purchase of low-carbon materials for our products and the selection of low-emission production units.

Energy expert team

The implementation of its own Energy expert team gives H&M Group’s suppliers access to free data, information and training on energy efficiency and renewable energies. The Energy experts perform audits and support to identify potential energy efficiency measures.

But the work doesn’t stop there. Knowing that even after the greatest possible reduction of global emissions, there remains a certain percentage of unavoidable fossil fuel emissions, H&M Group also invests in carbon removal solutions:

Carbon dioxide removal agreement with Climeworks

Climeworks empowers people and companies to fight global warming by offering carbon dioxide removal as a service via direct air capture technology. H&M Group signed a multi-year carbon removal agreement with Climeworks in 2022, which covers the removal of 10,000 tons of CO2. This enables H&M Group to access capacity and establish long-term relations in the sector already today, while contributing guaranteed demand towards Climeworks’ capacity scale-up. Scaling the carbon dioxide removal market starting now is essential to enable both H&M Group and the global economy to achieve net-zero in the coming decades.

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