Climate Change
Getting to grips with global warming
Governments, businesses and individuals around the world are looking for ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Fonterra is implementing initiatives across our business to reduce our carbon footprint.
We recognise that achieving sustainable outcomes requires both farming and manufacturing to invest in practices, technology and decision making that strikes the right balance between economic growth and environmental management.
We’ve already made some great progress:
Since 2003 we’ve reduced our energy consumption by 13.9 per cent per tonne of product.
That’s equivalent to the energy required to power 100,000 homes and, relative to 2003, represents a 320,000 tonne reduction in CO2 equivalent greenhouse gas emissions in 2010.
The improved energy use is driven by initiatives such as:
- Systematic analysis of energy needs at each plant
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Installation of heat recovery loops
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Attention to operating practices
- Monitoring and reporting on energy use.
• In order to understand the best ways to reduce emissions we have recently completed a carbon footprint study of the entire lifecycle of our New Zealand supply chain. We now know where and why emissions occur throughout the supply chain and can better target research investment.
• We are committed to reducing emissions per unit of product further. In partnership with government we are investing millions of dollars in leading edge research to further reduce the dairy industry’s carbon footprint. This includes research into the effectiveness of nitrification inhibitors in reducing emissions of nitrous oxide.
We are taking our responsibilities under New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme seriously. We’re now in the third year of simulating our own internal emissions trading scheme – The Emission Account – which monitors each of our New Zealand manufacturing site’s emissions.
We’re also collaborating with our industry partners around the world, and played a key role in developing the Global Dairy Agenda for Action on Climate Change .
