Addressing climate change is a big priority for Starbucks. Coffee farmers are reporting shifts in rainfall and harvest patterns that are hurting their communities and shrinking the available usable land in coffee regions around the world. We believe now is the time to increase our investments in solutions and strategies that address this crisis.
The steps we're taking not only address climate change for future generations – they help ensure the supply of high-quality coffee that our customers expect from us into the future.
We're working to significantly shrink our environmental footprint by conserving energy and water, reducing the waste associated with our cups, increasing recycling and incorporating green design into our stores. We're also working with Conservation International to address climate change on coffee farms.
Starbucks total scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions from roasting plant operations, store operations and company-owned jets and vehicles in fiscal 2007 were 913,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents. Because 75 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions come from the electricity used in our stores, offices and roasting plants, we are focusing our efforts on energy conservation.
What we've been doing.
Starbucks has been implementing a climate change strategy since 2004, focusing on renewable energy, energy conservation, and collaboration and advocacy. In fiscal 2008, we conducted our second carbon footprint study to see if our biggest impacts, as measured in 2003, remained the same – and indeed they have. So we'll continue to focus our efforts in these three areas.
Some steps we took in fiscal 2008 include:
- Renewable energy: We purchased renewable energy credits equal to 20 percent of the electricity for company-operated stores in the U.S. and Canada. This is the equivalent of the electricity used by more than 18,000 homes each year in the U.S. Learn more about our efforts to use renewable energy.
- Energy conservation: Our stores used slightly more energy per square foot in fiscal 2008 than the previous year. We are optimistic, however, that we'll see significant improvements in this trend starting next year, as a result of the opportunities we identified in our recent energy audit. Learn more about our efforts to conserve energy.
- Collaboration and advocacy: We recognize that we aren't alone in our work to address climate change. In 2008, we announced a renewed multi-year partnership with the nonprofit Conservation International to help coffee farmers protect standing forests and restore degraded landscapes surrounding their farms. It's an important step, because 20 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions come from burning and clearing forests – more than is released by all cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships, combined.
We have also joined with Nike, Timberland and other U.S. businesses in calling for strong U.S. climate change and renewable energy legislation. As charter members of BICEP (Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy), we believe climate change will impact all sectors of the economy and that various business perspectives are needed to provide a full spectrum of viewpoints for solving the climate and energy challenges facing America.
Hurdles.
The electricity we purchase for our stores is still our biggest contributor to climate change. We are investing in new lighting, HVAC (heating, ventilating and air conditioning) and other equipment to address this area in the way we design our stores.
What we're working on.
Addressing climate change will not be easy, but it is a big priority for us. We believe that governments, businesses, non-governmental organizations and individuals all can take action to have an impact. Starbucks is committed to the following goals to make a meaningful reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions:
- Making our company-owned stores 25 percent more energy efficient by 2010 and upgrading our existing stores to use less energy as we renovate them
- Opening our newest coffee roasting plant in South Carolina with the latest emissions control technologies on our roasters
- Continuing to focus on the aspects of our store operations that impact our carbon footprint, such as refrigerants in our coolers and ice machines and nitrous oxide in our whip cream dispensers
- Championing tropical rainforest protection in coffee-growing regions as a way to mitigate climate change and support coffee farming communities
About the numbers.
For fiscal 2007 we conducted an inventory of our greenhouse gas emissions based on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol developed by the World Resources Institute. We expanded the scope of our 2007 carbon footprint study to include international company-owned and joint-venture stores, using the criteria established in the 2006 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories to define the materials measured in our footprint. Sources included company-operated and joint-venture U.S. and international retail stores, coffee roasting and administrative operations. Our 2003 inventory did not include international stores or emissions from store operations.
