Corporate Responsibility Report 2008

Climate change and energy

It is widely acknowledged that human activity, primarily burning fossil fuels to produce energy, is contributing to climate change.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading climate authority, has stated that urgent action is needed to avoid the effects of dangerous climate change, including more frequent extreme weather events such as droughts, floods and hurricanes.

We want to be part of the solution to climate change and are committed to reducing our impact. As well as benefiting the environment, taking action on climate change helps us cut costs, improves our reputation with stakeholders and helps us prepare for future legislation on emissions.

Read about our energy and climate change position

Our climate change programme

In 2007, following the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we launched a new climate change programme and committed to new targets.

This includes a commitment to reducing our climate change impact (CO₂ equivalent emissions) and energy use in operations and transport from 2006 levels by 20 per cent per unit of sales (based on a constant exchange rate) by 2010 and by 45 per cent by 2015.

This replaced our 2006 target to reduce energy use by one per cent per year, normalised by sales.

We will achieve our new targets by:

Making our buildings and equipment more energy efficient
Installing onsite renewable technologies such as wind turbines and photovoltaic panels
Buying electricity produced from renewable sources
Reducing the climate impact of travel and transport by switching from air to sea freight and by transporting more per load to reduce the number of journeys needed

The Corporate Executive Team has approved a central fund to help finance these energy saving projects. The Climate Change and Energy Reduction team consulted with GSK businesses to identify potential energy saving projects. In 2008, 171 projects were completed which are expected to result in a saving of more than 153,000 Kwh (550,800 GJ) of energy per year and more than 40 thousand tonnes of climate change emissions.

Product climate impact

We are also researching ways to minimise the amount of greenhouse gases released when our propellant inhaler products are used by patients for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. These account for two-thirds of our climate impact. Propellant inhalers contain either hydrofluoroalkanes (HFAs) or chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) which ensure a consistent dose but HFAs are 1,400 times more damaging to the climate than CO2 and some CFCs are more than 10,000 times more damaging to the climate than CO2. CFCs also deplete the ozone layer.