Irish building materials company Kingspan Group is targeting a 10% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 as part of a new worldwide initiative.

Over 370 companies around the world are committed to the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), including Coca-Cola, Dell, GlaxoSmithKline and Tesco.

The initiative is the result of a partnership between the World Resource Institute, the World Wildlife Fund, CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) and the United Nations Global Compact which looks to support companies across the world to do their part in tackling the worst impacts of climate change by supporting them to determine how much they must cut their emissions by.

Kingspan is also committing to reduce its absolute emissions from purchased goods and services, business travel, transport and distribution, and end-of-life treatment of sold products by 10%.

SBTi provides participating companies with a clearly defined pathway to future-proof business growth by specifying how much and how quickly they need to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. These targets are set in line with the level of decarbonisation required to keep global temperature increase below two degrees Celsius, consistent with the goals of the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, which 195 countries signed up to.

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Gene Murtagh, CEO of Kingspan, said: "At Kingspan, we are dedicated to sustainable business practise, from our products, to our processes and our people, which is why we are delighted to sign up to the Science Based Targets Initiative. This provides measurable targets for our business to achieve and will ensure that we continue to match our words with actions that make a real difference."

STBi is another important part of the Kingspan journey to operate as sustainably as possible. In 2017, 69% of the total energy used by Kingspan's operations came from renewable sources, and the Group is on target to achieve its goal of Net Zero Energy (NZE) status by 2020. As part of its journey to achieve NZE status, Kingspan Group has seen a 77% reduction in carbon intensity across its operations, and is benefitting from 34.5 GWh of on-site energy it is generating. Kingspan will continue to drive energy efficiency improvements, increase renewable energy usage, and extend the scope of its emissions reduction programme to drive improvements throughout its supply chain. 

Kingspan is also one of just 114 companies across the world to make the CDP 'A List' in both 2017 and 2016. CDP, formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project, is the international investor led not-for-profit that measures environmental impact of thousands of companies around the world.

(CM/MH)