Our CO₂ emissions in Hannover in the year under review amounted to 8,283 tonnes, a decrease of 1% year-on-year. The measured emissions are considered indirect CO₂ emissions as per the Greenhouse Gas Protocol classification of emissions and result from the consumption of energy (Scope 2) or business trips (Scope 3). The calculation is based on the consumption figures for district heating and paper as well as our business travel. Given that we have obtained our electricity in Hannover exclusively from renewable sources since 2012, no emissions are caused in this regard. We plan to progressively expand the purchasing of green energy worldwide.

As a service provider, we do not produce any direct CO₂ emissions (Scope 1) such as those caused by industry through plant operations.

We have fully achieved our goal of operating with a net zero carbon footprint at the Hannover location since the 2016 financial year.

CO₂ emissions

¹ The present figures differ from those published in the Sustainability Report 2016 due to retrospective adjustment of the number of kilometres actually flown on business trips. This in turn necessitated an adjustment of the data on CO₂ emissions.

Business travel accounts for around 96.9% of our total emissions. Since 2007 we have therefore worked together with the climate protection organisation atmosfair to calculate, control and offset them.

We also offset the smaller portion of our CO₂ emissions (4%, corresponding to 299 tonnes of CO₂), which is attributable to district heating, business trips made by car and paper consumption, by making compensatory payments to atmosfair.

CO₂ emissions in 2017 according to causation

CO₂ emissions in 2017 from business travel by means of transport

The CO₂ emissions from business travel decreased in the year under review to 8,029 tonnes (previous year: 8,099 tonnes¹).

CO₂ emissions from business travel

¹ The present figures differ from those published in the Sustainability Report 2016 due to retrospective adjustment of the number of kilometres actually flown on business trips. This in turn necessitated an adjustment of the data on CO₂ emissions.

We remain committed to making greater use of videoconferences and, where possible, we replace business trips with videoconferences. The roll-out of a new unified communication platform means that web conferencing is now possible from all workstations. In this way we want to further reduce the number of business trips made within the Group. In order to ensure that not only small but also larger meetings involving several participants per location can be held in the form of a web-based conference, more than 40 web conference rooms have been set up worldwide; along with a camera and video technology, these are also equipped with remote white boards, thereby making it possible to share sketches and drawings made at the meeting across all locations.

The option of teleworking also offers potential savings. Emissions can be cut by eliminating the daily commute. 33.4% of the workforce employed in Hannover already makes use of this possibility.

Paper-intensive publications such as our Group Annual Report, brochures and the documents for the Annual General Meeting are printed on a carbon-neutral basis. Other publications such as this Sustainability Report, for example, are made available to our stakeholders only in paperless form as HTML and PDF versions. We have committed ourselves to this approach in our internal Corporate Design Manual. The measures that have brought about the reduction in paper consumption are described in detail in the section entitled "Paper consumption".

Thanks to our decreased paper consumption, the CO₂ emissions for this item also fell to 8.7 tonnes (previous year: 9.2 tonnes).