In his editorial of our new Sustainability Highlight Report, our CEO and Chief Sustainability Officer Bill Anderson emphasizes that sustainability is central to everything we do at Bayer. It enables us to create inclusive growth but, even more, to create value for society. Our overall goal against this background is to contribute significantly to achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Already in 2019, we have therefore set ourselves very ambitious sustainability targets for 2030 and I am very pleased that we continued to make good progress in the past very difficult year.
In the area of health we have reached 75 million people in economically or medically underserved communities with self-care products, and we were able to support 46 million women with modern contraception. In the agricultural sector we supported 53 million smallholder farmers in low- and middle-income countries. Overall, we have improved in all three areas compared to the previous year. Our goal is to reach 100 million people in each of these areas by 2030.
However, our sustainability efforts are also about our own ecological footprint. As many of you know, we want to reduce our own greenhouse gas emissions (Scope 1 and 2) by 42 percent by 2029 compared to 2019. We are currently at a reduction of 20.2 percent. We have also made progress with Scope 3 emissions. They increased in 2022 – but in 2023 we were able to turn it around and reduced Scope 3 emissions by 4.2% relative to our 2019 baseline. The challenge ahead remains, and in 2023 we redoubled our efforts to seek further reduced emissions in the future.
At the same time, we want to use only electricity from renewable energies from 2030 onwards. We are currently at 35.4 percent. So, we still have quite a way to go. I am therefore all the more pleased that last year we signed an agreement with Cat Creek Energy (CCE), an Independent Power Producer in the field of renewable energies, which will make a significant contribution to reducing our carbon footprint in energy procurement. This agreement marks one of the biggest single renewable energy deals in the United States. It will secure 40 percent of Bayer's global and 60 percent of Bayer's US-purchased electricity demand out of renewable sources. Another highlight was the presentation of our water strategy at the UN Water Conference in New York. It reflects our intrinsic motivation to address the water crisis and make a valuable contribution to overcoming the global water crisis.
I could go on and on, but I wanted to leave it at a few highlights. But I don't want to finish before I have thanked everyone who contributed to this report. I know it's a lot of work!
You can find everything else in our Sustainability Highlight Report and the detailed overall Sustainability Report:
https://lnkd.in/evbUGmuz
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