One year ago, in response to the environmental and climate emergency, Groupe URD made a formal commitment, along with 9 French NGOs, to reduce its environmental footprint by signing the Statement of Commitment on Climate by Humanitarian Organisations. Concretely, we made a commitment to reduce the carbon intensity of our turnover by 30% by 2025, and by 50% by 2030, compared to 2019. So, what does this represent and how are we doing?
The carbon intensity of our turnover corresponds to the quantity of greenhouse gas emitted per euro (or, more precisely, per kilo euro) of our budget. In other words, this is calculated by dividing the overall emissions in one year by the budget of that year. Reducing the carbon intensity of an organisation’s turnover is therefore a way of reducing its emissions in relation to an overall volume of activity, without necessarily hindering growth.
To monitor our progress, we began by carrying out a carbon footprint assessment for 2019. This showed that we emitted approximately 150 tCO2e, of which almost ¾ was for travel. Unsurprisingly, air travel represents 90% of this source of emissions.
Clearly, in order to respect our commitments, the first thing we will have to do is reduce our air travel. In this respect, the reduction of international travel due to the Covid-19 health crisis has been, and continues to be, an unexpected opportunity that should not be neglected.
Analysis of our carbon footprint from flights shows that there has been a drop from 100 to 36 tCO2e between 2019 and 2021. As a result, the carbon intensity of our turnover has fallen by 31%! In other words, due to the health crisis, Groupe URD has already reached its objective for 2025.
This good news obviously should not make us forget that structural measures will be needed to sustain and increase this drop in emissions in order to reach the objective of -50% by 2030. To this end, we are planning to draw up our new environmental roadmap at the beginning of 2022, when ambitious measures will be decided collectively so that staff are fully invested in the process.