Hong Kong
COP26: The Estée Lauder Companies Convenes Business Leaders to Drive Action on Climate Change
ELC and its UK & Ireland Affiliate unite the business community to help scale climate solutions to address global Scope 3 footprints
Company Feature, Nov 4, 2021
The Estée Lauder Companies (ELC) is joining the annual, 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26). COP26 is underway in Glasgow, Scotland (October 31 to November 12, 2021), bringing the international climate talks to the UK for the first time. Following the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report’s urgent demand for an accelerated climate response, COP26 is set to be a decisive moment in the global efforts to tackle climate change, gathering climate experts, heads of state, youth climate enthusiasts, businesses and Indigenous peoples to agree upon coordinated action.
Glasgow, Scotland
ELC has long understood that the challenges facing global communities and long-term business value creation are not separate. The company’s climate action efforts are one part of its broader ESG strategy to deliver meaningful impact across the value chain and contribute to a stable climate. Significant progress has been made to-date, but to drive the change needed, businesses must act together. COP26 offers a tremendous opportunity to generate both short and long-term action at scale, which is why ELC is joining world leaders at this pivotal event as part of the broader business community — to help build a common pathway to a low carbon future.
For ELC, and many other businesses, reducing carbon impacts beyond direct operations is a key focus for the next phase of its climate journey and a core pillar of the company’s climate action strategy. After achieving Net Zero and sourcing 100% renewable electricity across its direct operations in 2020, the company also set science-based targets to further reduce emissions across the value chain. Critically, these targets are aligned with the 1.5 degrees pathway as classified by the Science Based Targets initiative — a significant area of opportunity for business action on climate*. As more companies across industries adopt and deliver on these vetted, science-backed goals, the business community will be able to drive collective momentum toward substantial emissions reduction.
In 2019, The Estée Lauder Companies became the first prestige beauty company to execute a Virtual Power Purchase Agreement for a wind farm in Oklahoma, which is now generating clean, renewable energy, and adding green electricity to the grid.
To help meet these targets, the company is not only leveraging key learnings from achieving its 2020 climate goals, but also working with supply chain partners as well as actively seeking to listen and learn from peers to implement integrated solutions. Partnership and collaboration through meaningful dialogue are key to driving the short-term action required to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. That’s why ELC is convening like-minded businesses during COP26, with its partners at Climate Group, to meaningfully engage on Scope 3 emissions.
In fiscal 2021, The Estée Lauder Companies expanded its renewable energy portfolio through a new, on-site solar installation in Hillmount, Canada, bringing its total solar capacity to 5.7 MW.
Through a cross-industry roundtable designed to catalyze action, peers will discuss best practices, tackle shared challenges and explore collective opportunities to address value chain impacts. Addressing Scope 3 emissions and driving supply chain resilience in the era of climate change is critical for climate action and the roundtable will bring together leaders from across the industry to address what a collective effort to reduce these emissions could look like in practice and co-create recommendations for short-term actions that could transform supply chains toward a net zero future.
“We join the discussions at COP26 as a committed partner and collaborator,” said Nancy Mahon, Senior Vice President, Global Corporate Citizenship and Sustainability. “Reducing Scope 3 emissions is a huge area of opportunity for many businesses, but driving change at scale requires radical collaboration across organizations and industries. We have to design holistic strategies to tackle these collective challenges.” While no single actor has all the answers to address climate change, pursuing solutions through unexpected avenues and partners is an important part of the company’s and many other’s climate journeys. By gathering insights during this important event, the company looks forward to sharing key areas of opportunity where the corporate business sector can help to deliver more decisive action now and in the coming decade.
Update – January 27, 2022
Following the successful roundtable, ELC and the Climate Group have published a report highlighting the recommendations discussed by roundtable participants. Titled “Shifting Systems – supply chains: Leading Scope 3 emissions collaboration” the report is accessible and actionable to ELC’s peers and partners across its global communities, helping to drive a more collaborative response to the challenges facing the planet.
*ELC’s Scope 1 and 2 targets are aligned with a 1.5°C pathway, the most ambitious goal of the Paris Agreement. As of the publication of this article, the SBTi does not classify Scope 3 target ambition. ELC’s Scope 3 target, covering emissions from the company’s value chain, meets the SBTi’s criteria for ambitious value chain goals and is in line with current best practice.
