Case study: How RWE makes its electricity generation more climate friendly

What are the material issues the company has identified?

In its ‘Our Responsibility. Report 2015’ RWE identified a range of material issues, such as market and customers, innovation, employees, supply chain, environmental protection and biodiversity. Among these, making its electricity generation more climate friendly stands out as a key material issue for RWE.

Stakeholder engagement in accordance with the GRI Standards

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) defines the Principle of Stakeholder Inclusiveness when identifying material issues (or a company’s most important impacts) as follows:

“The organization should identify its stakeholders, and explain how it has responded to their reasonable expectations.”

Stakeholders must be consulted in the process of identifying a company’s most important impacts and their reasonable expectations and interests must be taken into account. This is an important cornerstone for CSR / sustainability reporting done responsibly.

Key stakeholder groups RWE engages with:   

How stakeholder engagement was made to identify material issues

In 2015, to identify and evaluate material issues and areas for action, RWE conducted a survey of external expectations, on the expectations of its stakeholders. Stakeholders were asked about issues, challenges and areas for action they considered important for RWE, as well as about what they expected from the company, through structured interviews with 38 representatives of civil society organisations and institu­tions in Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Poland and the Czech Republic. Survey results were complemented with information obtained through RWE’s stakeholder engagement process.

What actions were taken by RWE to make its electricity generation more climate friendly?

In its ‘Our Responsibility. Report 2015’ RWE reports that it took the following actions for making its electricity generation more climate friendly:

• Monitoring and reducing CO2 emissions
• RWE uses CO2 emissions per megawatt hour of electricity generated as a KPI (Key Performance Indicator) to measure progress towards the achievement of RWE’s target to reduce, by 2020, its specific CO2 emissions from 0.71 mt per megawatt hour (MWh) generated to 0.62 mt/MWh. In 2015, RWE’s specific CO2 emissions were reduced by approximately 5%.

• Renewing RWE’s power plants
• Since 2006 RWE replaced over 20% of its conventional electricity generation systems with advanced, efficient plants, spending more than €12 billion.

• Transferring lignite-fired power station units to security standby
• In accordance with German legislation, RWE committed to transfer five lignite-fired power station units to security standby, reducing CO2 emissions by approximately 12.3 million mt CO2.

• Increasing electricity generation from renewable sources
• In 2015:
  • RWE increased its installed output of renewable energies from 3,677 MW to 4,146 MW.
  • Two big offshore wind farms, operated by RWE, were brought on stream.
  • RWE erected two onshore wind farms in Poland, with a total output of 45 MW.
  • RWE opened the biggest photovoltaic park in Hun­gary, with 72,480 solar modules and a total output of 16 MW.

Which GRI indicators/Standards have been addressed?

The GRI indicators/Standards addressed in this case are:

1) G4-EN15: Direct greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Scope 1) – the updated GRI Standard is: Disclosure 305-1 Direct (Scope 1) GHG emissions

2) G4-EN16: Energy indirect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Scope 2) – the updated GRI Standard is: Disclosure 305-2 Energy indirect (Scope 2) GHG emissions

3) G4-EN17: Other indirect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Scope 3) – the updated GRI Standard is: Disclosure 305-3 Other indirect (Scope 3) GHG emissions

4) G4-EN18: Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions intensity – the updated GRI Standard is: Disclosure 305-4 GHG emissions intensity

5) G4-EN19: Reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions – the updated GRI Standard is: Disclosure 305-5 Reduction of GHG emissions

6) G4-EN27: Extent of impact mitigation of environmental impacts of products and services

78% of the world’s 250 largest companies report in accordance with the GRI Standards

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References:

1) This case study is based on published information by RWE, located at the link below. For the sake of readability, we did not use brackets or ellipses. However, we made sure that the extra or missing words did not change the report’s meaning. If you would like to quote these written sources from the original, please revert to the original on the Global Reporting Initiative’s Sustainability Disclosure Database at the link:

http://database.globalreporting.org/

2) http://www.fbrh.co.uk/en/global-reporting-initiative-gri-g4-guidelines-download-page

3) https://g4.globalreporting.org/Pages/default.aspx

4) https://www.globalreporting.org/standards/gri-standards-download-center/

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