Panasonic GREEN IMPACT

Panasonic was founded a century ago, and today, more than a billion people rely on our products. While we’re proud of our impact on work and society around the world, we recognise that this contributes to global energy consumption and comes with a large carbon footprint. And it’s our responsibility to reduce our emissions and do everything we can to address climate change. 

That’s why we’ve established Panasonic GREEN IMPACT, a long-term environmental initiative for the Panasonic Group that aims to facilitate a carbon neutral future for us as a company, and for society. Together, we can set change in motion from within and champion innovation for a more sustainable future.

Awareness

Our world is changing. Global temperatures have reached dangerous highs, triggering shifting climate patterns and extreme weather events. Heat waves, wildfires, flooding and droughts are already transforming ecosystems and impacting our daily lives. 

Since the 19th century, the earth’s average temperature has risen 1oC, and if we continue on this path, we’ll reach 1.5oC by 2030. While this may sound insignificant, scientists warn that breaching this limit will have catastrophic consequences. It’s too late to stop climate change in its tracks, but we can slow its pace and eventually change course. 

But we have to act now.

Global warming is caused by rising levels of Greenhouse Gases (GhG) trapping heat in the earth’s atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, or CO2, accounts for 70-80% of this and is released primarily through the burning of fossil fuels, the making of cement and deforestation. So, one of the main ways we can tackle climate change is by slashing our CO2 emissions by reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and cleaning up carbon-heavy industries. 

That’s why at Panasonic, we’re focusing our efforts on reducing the energy consumed in producing and using our products by utilising green innovation such as clean energy generation, energy efficiency and energy storage.

Impact

A business’s carbon footprint is broken down into 3 emission categories called “scopes” – direct emissions, indirect emissions, and upstream and downstream emissions. The total CO2 emitted by Panasonic every year under Scopes 1, 2 and 3 is approximately 110 million tons. 

Panasonic has 250 factories around the world which collectively consume around 5 billion kWh of electricity every year (as of FY 2020). This amounts to around 2.2 million tons of CO2 per year. 

For this reason, tackling our manufacturing emissions is our first priority. 

That said, around 98% of our total carbon footprint falls under Scope 3 emissions. This is because the bulk of our CO2 emissions come from the energy consumed by our products. In fact, our products use around 1% of the electricity on earth. That’s why up to 80% of the carbon footprint for each individual device is emitted after purchase. 

At Panasonic, we are focusing on reducing our direct CO₂ emissions from our own business operations. Beyond that, we are continuously innovating to provide solutions that help our customers avoid CO₂ emissions in every part of their business, building, community and supply chain.

Ambition

In May 2021, Panasonic declared its commitment to achieve net zero CO2 emissions across business activities of all group operating companies by 2030. This commitment applies to Scope 1 (direct emissions from business activities) and Scope 2 (indirect emissions such as utility costs) emissions. And we aim to achieve net zero CO2 emissions across scopes 1,2 and 3 by 2050.

 

We’ve broken our goals down into two categories: direct emission reduction and contribution to global reduction through emission avoidance.

  • Reduce emissions from our own business operations (scope 1 and 2) to net zero CO2 by 2030.
  • Reduce CO2 emissions from our entire supply chain (scope 3) to net zero by 2050 by reducing the energy consumed by our products after purchase.
  • Contribute to the avoidance of future emissions through the use of existing technology (e.g. heatpumps, EV batteries) to support the global transition to net zero.
  • Contribute to the avoidance of future emissions by developing new technology that supports the global transition to net zero.

Action

When it comes to sustainability, there’s a lot of talk – and often not enough action. 

At Panasonic, we are pioneers and innovators, and we want our climate action to reflect that. Panasonic GREEN IMPACT is at the heart of our business strategy. That means we’re not only strongly committed to making our own value chain more sustainable – we’re continually and increasingly contributing to the transition to a greener global society by developing industry-leading low-carbon technology.

Net zero CO2 factories

In 2018, we established our first net zero carbon factories by generating our own renewable energy onsite, procuring any additional electricity from clean energy sources, and offsetting remaining emissions. We currently have nine net zero carbon plants around the world and will be continuously implementing this approach across all our factories (approx. 250) globally.

Smart factory solutions

Manufacturing is in our DNA, and through continual innovation, we hope to contribute to the entire industry’s decarbonisation – one smart factory at a time. 

Efficiency is the driving force behind this initiative. Our Smart Factory Solutions business provides equipment with the lowest energy consumption on the market. And through the combination of software solutions, consultancy services, and automation, we’re significantly reducing downtime, defects, and waste in the production line. 

By making factory equipment smarter, more connected, and longer lasting – we can maximise efficiency and transparency across our supply chains.

Sustainable Visual Solutions

We pride ourselves on being one of the world’s first companies to switch our projectors from lamp to eco-friendly laser-light sources. A switch that reduces the use of toxic metals and vastly improves the devices’ energy efficiency. We’ve also reduced the physical footprint of our projectors by up to 40% - leading to less resource consumption and waste. 

And we introduced washable and re-usable Eco-Filters which, when combined with the 20,000 guaranteed maintenance-free hours of operation, makes our projectors longer-lasting and less resource-intensive.

Reducing waste with software

Our Broadcasting and ProAV business has led the charge in replacing hardware with software and making equipment as resource efficient as possible to reduce the amount of disposables ending up in landfill. We were one of the first companies to replace tapes and optical disks in cameras with memory cards. 

KAIROS, Panasonic’s next-generation live production platform, is now playing an important part in driving the industry towards IT/IP video processing. With its software approach and open modular architecture design, the system can easily be upgraded – replacing the need for traditional switcher hardware. 

Panasonic has also introduced a refurbishment and certification programme for its popular PTZ camera range, extending the life of our cameras even further. The ongoing investment in the development of ever smaller and more efficient cameras and their supporting solutions also continues to reduce the resources used in new products and improve power efficiency.

Extending the life of our devices

Historically, businesses have had to regularly swap out their mobile devices to meet rapidly changing business requirements. This can mean devices are discarded after as little as two years. 

Panasonic Mobile Solutions Business is taking steps to reduce waste and resource consumption by developing its rugged TOUGHBOOK notebooks and tablets to be reconfigured and repurposed multiple times throughout their long lifecycles. 

Panasonic TOUGHBOOK’s flexibility and adaptability also makes them the ideal all-in-one solution for teams in the field. Accessories such as a fingerprint reader and a second battery can be added with a simple switch, fit and click by the user. 

This type of breakthrough technology will enable businesses to adopt a more sustainable mobile computing strategy and aims to encourage a more economical and circular approach across the board.

Supply chain transparency

As well as making our own manufacturing and supply chain more sustainable, Panasonic Connect is working with Panasonic-owned companies, Blue Yonder and Zetes, to help our customers in manufacturing, logistics and retail to transform their own supply chains. 

Blue Yonder’s commerce solutions give way to seamless inventory and order management and enables the utilisation of a business’s data across their supply chains. This smart approach to global commerce can facilitate less waste and more sustainable growth. 

Zetes provides traceability and visibility across entire supply chains and streamlines processes from manufacturing to transportation and retail. This transparency will help drive efficiency and illuminate areas that need changing for an environmentally and ethically responsible supply chain. 

By intelligently combining components, hardware and software with our extensive industry experience, we’re delivering turnkey integrated supply chain solutions that support a sustainable future.

Mission

Panasonic’s GREEN IMPACT initiative not only aims to reduce emissions from our own value chain, but to contribute to society’s transition to carbon neutrality. By transforming our own operations and championing innovation in clean energy technology, Panasonic Group aims to reduce and avoid CO2 emissions by more than 300 million tons1 by 2050. That’s around 1% of the current total global emissions. We’ve split our reduction of 300 million tons into three types of impact.

 

1. OWN IMPACT

We are working to reduce CO2 emissions by 110 million tonnes across the Panasonic Group’s entire value chain, achieving net zero CO2 emissions by 2050. And we are accelerating our efforts to achieve net zero CO2 emissions for our own business operations (scope 1 and 2) by 2.2 million tons by 2030.

 

2. CONTRIBUTION IMPACT

We will contribute to society’s transition to carbon neutrality by facilitating the avoidance of approx. 100 million tonnes of CO2 annually by providing existing technology and solutions that help save energy and reduce emissions. (e.g. heatpump technology, smart supply chain software, batteries for electric vehicles, low- emission air quality and air conditioning).

 

3. FUTURE IMPACT

We aim to facilitate the avoidance of an additional 100 million tonnes CO2 reduction outside of our value chain by continuing to develop and bring to market new clean energy technology and smart business solutions.

 

Beyond these three areas of impact, Panasonic Group’s proactive initiatives will undoubtedly result in a wide-reaching ripple effect that will drive sustainable change around the world. But this will not be included in the calculation of our emission reduction results.

 

 *1 33.6 billion tons of energy-related CO2 emissions in 2019 (Source: IEA) 

*2 Factors for calculating CO2 emission are the 2020 factors.