SAN FRANCISCO—Leaders from Philips Lighting (Euronext Amsterdam: LIGHT), a global leader in lighting, will today meet with Energy Ministers attending the seventh Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM7) summit in San Francisco, where the company will announce a commitment to sell more than two billion1 energy efficient LED light bulbs by 2020. Reaching this goal is estimated to save an amount of energy equivalent to that generated by 60 medium-sized coal-fired power stations with emissions equivalent to those from 24 million cars by 2020. The company will also reaffirm its pledge to make its global operations carbon neutral by 2020 and say that it expects electricity for its US operations to be 100% from renewable sources later this year.
The Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) is a forum of countries working together to accelerate the global transition to clean energy. Speaking later today at its summit in San Francisco, Bill Bien, Head of Strategy for Philips Lighting commented, “We plan to turn the agreement at the COP21 UN Climate Change Summit in Paris into tangible action. Energy efficiency is the low-hanging fruit in the fight against climate change. Delivering on this pledge will be positive for our environment as well as the global economy, resulting in energy savings of around EUR 12 billion annually by 2020 that could be invested elsewhere. The clock is ticking for humanity — action is needed now before it’s too late.”
The Philips Lighting pledge supports the Global Lighting Challenge – a campaign to deploy 10 billion high efficiency, high quality affordable light bulbs (such as LED) as soon as possible to combat climate change. The campaign was launched last December by the Clean Energy Ministerial at the COP21 UN Climate Change Summit.
Committed to becoming carbon neutral
At the CEM7 summit Philips Lighting will call upon other companies to follow its lead and accept the challenge of becoming a carbon neutral company. At COP21, Royal Philips pledged to become a carbon neutral company and purchase all of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Philips Lighting reaffirms both of these commitments and offers to share its experience and learnings with other organizations as it works to meet these challenges.
Key to achieving carbon neutrality is the use of energy from renewables and driving down carbon emissions in operations and logistics. Philips Lighting reported progress in the US where it expects electricity for its operation to be 100% carbon neutral this year thanks to a power purchase agreement from the Hidalgo Wind Farm in McCook, Texas.
“It’s gratifying to produce LED light bulbs and connected lighting systems that reduce energy consumption by up to 80% compared to conventional lighting. But we must be accountable for our own footprint too – that’s why we’re committed to being carbon neutral by the end of the decade. To do this we’ve had to re-examine everything we do: our operations, processes and supply chain. I’m pleased to report we’re well on the way to achieving this goal and last year increased our use of renewables globally to 60% 2,”said Bien.
1The more than two billion LED bulbs pledge by Philips Lighting is calculated from 2015-2020 (inclusive).
2This figure relates to the period 2007-2015 and is in line with the information provided in the Royal Philips Annual Report 2015.
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