Latin America. Philips Lighting announced the launch of its new five-year sustainability program "Brighter Lives, a Better World" during the week of the Climate Summit in New York City. This is the first time Philips Lighting has set sustainability goals as an independent, listed company, built on Philips' long legacy of world-class sustainability performance and its EcoVision programs.
Philips earned an industry group leader position in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index Capital Goods category after four years of consecutive nominations. The company played a pivotal role in this achievement with its sustainable revenue reaching 72 percent of its total sales in 2015.
"Brighter Lives, a Better World" is based on Philips Lighting's ambition to create brighter lives with quality light that improves people's well-being, safety and productivity. The company is accelerating the transition to energy savings with connected lighting systems and LEDs that contribute to creating a better world, where customers can reduce their electricity consumption by up to 80 percent. Important program commitments for 2020 include:
I. Sustainable income: 80% of the turnover of products, systems and services that provide environmental and social benefits.
II. Sustainable operations: 100% carbon neutral operations and switch to 100% renewable electricity.
Speaking at the climate summit week in New York City, Eric Rondolat, CEO of Philips Lighting, said: "Our ambition is to lead the industry with sustainable connected lighting and to show that we lead by example, we launched our sustainability programme 'Brighter Lives, a Better World'. We have strong targets for 2020 that include improving energy efficiency, reducing waste through circular lighting and offering access to light in off-grid areas. We are convinced that we can combat climate change and reduce global energy demand through our commitment to sell more than two billion LED light points by 2020. For us, sustainability is a double win: a driver for economic growth and a means to move the planet forward."
Since buildings account for about 40 percent of all global energy use, renovating existing building inventory and new building technologies can help achieve energy efficiency, which in turn can enable emission reductions. Philips Lighting today announced, together with The Climate Group and the World Green Building Council, a shared call to action for all new buildings to use LED lighting by 2020 and all existing buildings by 2030.
"As we move towards a new climate-resilient future, one of the most immediate opportunities we can seize is driving energy efficiency through renovation and lighting," said Damian Ryan, acting managing director, The Climate Group. "Buildings and infrastructure use a significant amount of the world's energy, so bold targets are needed to drastically reduce this and help keep us on track with the Paris Agreement. The adoption of energy-efficient LED lighting is the fastest and most economical change we could make tomorrow. This is why we support the call for all new and existing buildings to be provided with energy-efficient LED lighting by 2030."
In 2015, Philips was recognized as a global leader for corporate action on climate change, achieving the highest score in the CDP climate change survey for the third year in a row. It is estimated that by 2020 Philips Lighting's carbon neutrality target will be achieved in order to save an amount of energy equivalent to that generated by 60 medium-sized coal-fired power plants with emissions equivalent to those of 24 million cars by 2020.
