Published on June 17, 2020

20 years of concrete commitments to fight climate change

With the Climate and Energy 2019 law, France set itself the objective of becoming totally carbon neutral by 2050. La Poste has been committed to a carbon-neutral approach for twenty years and is playing its full part in meeting this historic challenge. The result is a more sustainable world for all

As a local player, Le Groupe La Poste has always placed the public interest at the heart of its actions. The Group has therefore committed to combating global warming in its internal practices to reduce its footprint. As early as 1973, for example, it introduced its electric fleet of vehicles.  Today, the Group is the first postal operator in the world to be completely carbon neutral: since 2012, the mail, express parcel and digital services have been carbon neutral, in 2018, those of La Banque Postale, and at the end of 2019, those of La Poste Network.

Based on this long-term path, and on its own experience, La Poste has designed solutions to support its customers in their own energy transition.

Commitments and actions in several phases

La Poste continues to pursue its efforts to ensure transparency. The various projects are therefore subject to evaluation by independent agencies.

Objectives for the future

-La Poste has set a clear objective: to reduce emissions by 30% between 2013 and 2025.

-Since 2015, fifteen projects (soon to be 17) to safeguard natural ecosystems on 137 hectares in France have been financed by the "Climate + Territories" programme of BSCC, La Banque Postale and La Poste Network. And several projects are being developed internationally.

-From the summer of 2020 onwards, Chronopost aims to make deliveries to its customers using electric vehicles (100% neutral) in more than 18 cities in France.

-La Banque Postale Asset Management is committed to becoming the first non-specialised 100% SRI asset management company by the end of 2020.  All open products managed for individual and professional customers will converge towards responsible management.  3 billion in outstanding project financing for the energy and ecological transition (EET) at the end of 2023 will be implemented, thereby helping to limit CO2 emissions.

-With Green Postal Day, 25 postal operators from around the world are sharing their solutions to create widespread momentum in other business sectors.

-Lastly, La Poste aims to develop a fleet of "citizen bicycles" to enhance sustainable mobility.

Key figures

100%

of emissions from the Group's activities are measured and offset

  • 21.80% represents the reduction in emissions achieved by the Group between 2013 and 2019.

  • 30% is the target for reducing emissions between 2013 and 2025.

  • 37,442 electric vehicles, including 16,503 electric vehicles, i.e. 24% of the total fleet (excluding bicycles and trolleys), and 8,649 light vehicles (Staby and quads) for urban deliveries

  • 100% of emissions from the Group's activities are measured and offset

DEDICATED TO CARBON NEUTRALITY FOR 20 YEARS

GLOSSARY

Carbon neutrality

It is a balance to be achieved between man-made greenhouse gas emissions and their removal from the atmosphere by man.  When the difference between the gases emitted and removed (or offset) is zero, we refer to it as carbon neutrality (or sometimes "zero net emissions").

Carbon offsetting

This is the action that aims to offset the CO2 emissions that cannot be avoided by financing projects that have a positive impact on the environment by limiting CO2 emissions.

Science Based Target initiative

Launched by the United Nations, the Science Based Target (SBTi) initiative guides companies that want to be in line with the 2°C scenario of the Paris Agreements.  The latter plans to keep global temperature rise below 2°C.  The STBi evaluates and validates or not the strategy as well as the means implemented by the companies, via a panel of scientists.  SBTi has validated the objective that La Poste has set itself for 2025: to reduce its CO2 emissions by 30% between 2013 and 2025.

EMS (Energy Management System)

The EMS makes it possible to control energy consumption in buildings and transport in order to reduce it.  La Poste obtained ISO 50 001 certification in March 2020 for 196 sites.  Its ambition is to have 80% of its sites and 100% of its transport operations ISO 50 001 certified by 2030.  The EMS thus contributes to mitigating La Poste's CO2 emissions.

Low carbon label

Introduced by the French government in 2019, this label enables the certification of greenhouse gas emission reduction and carbon offset projects in France in various sectors (forestry, agriculture, waste, buildings, etc.).La Poste helped to define the label and is contributing to the very first low-carbon labelled projects.