According to a ranking by the market research company Statista and the business magazine Capital, the online specialist retailer for mountain sports, climbing and outdoor equipment, Bergfreunde, is the company with the greatest climate awareness in Germany. Zalando and Puma, also from the clothing industry, followed in second and third place, followed by Porsche and Telefónica Germany.
Compared to the previous year, the companies increased, as the first three managed for the first time to reduce their average annual greenhouse gas emissions by more than 50 percent by 2020, while the best value in the previous year’s survey was a CO2 reduction of 40 percent.
Bergfreunde, Zalando and Puma in front
The “Climate-conscious companies in Germany” ranking is based on data from over 2,000 German listed corporations, large medium-sized companies and family businesses on greenhouse gas emissions as well as publicly available information, such as from sustainability reports. The focus of the analysis was the question of which companies are best able to reduce CO2 emissions without having to restrict sales or production growth.
Bergfreunde has managed to reduce the average intensity of its CO2 emissions by 60.2 percent over the past three years. The fast-growing online mail-order company has had a major impact with its fully automated, energy-saving logistics center and the complete conversion to renewable energies, overtaking last year’s winner Zalando. With currently comparatively low emissions (Scope 1 + 2) of 30 tons of CO2, Bergfreunde comes to an emission intensity of 0.20 (emissions in relation to sales). The CARR value (Compound Annual Reduction Rate) of 60.2 percent, which is relevant for the capital climate ranking, is calculated from this. Bergfreunde received additional points because the company already collects Scope 3 data and formulates climate protection goals according to the Science Based Target Initiative, and achieved the best overall result with a total of 79.70 out of 100 possible points.
“We are very proud of this result, but we are still on the way, not there yet. For us, as a non-energy-intensive company, it is comparatively easy to drastically reduce our emissions. We want to encourage other companies to follow this path,” commented Matthias Gebhard, Managing Director of Bergfreunde GmbH, in a press release. “Climate protection is very important to us, also because it is the basis of our business. With our commitment, we want to show that ecology and economy are not opposites, but essential parameters for being able to live healthily and work successfully in the future. We see this award as an incentive for further climate protection measures,” adds Gebhard. The 100 most ambitious companies included in the ranking produced around 111 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in 2019/2020, a reduction of 50 percent compared to the previous year. According to an analysis by the think tank Agora Energiewende, total greenhouse gas emissions in Germany in 2020 were around 739 million tons.