Danone announces re-fuel Danone

• The new program will transform the energy footprint of Danone’s sites worldwide, significantly up weighting renewable energy sources

• Harnesses digital innovation, operational excellence, and local partnerships to power growth

• Unites performance and sustainability, marking further progress against Renew Danone strategy

Danone announces a Global Energy Excellence Programme, Re-Fuel Danone, to transform the energy footprint of its sites worldwide and make its operations more agile, energy and cost-efficient, resilient, and sustainable.

To deliver the ambitious program Danone will harness digital innovation and its existing engineering expertise to drive energy efficiency and accelerate its decarbonization journey. It will also expand on partnerships with local renewable energy providers to increase energy resilience and create shared value in the communities where it operates.

The Re-Fuel program will see Danone:

• improve energy efficiency by 30% by 2025

• significantly increase its use of renewable energy, such as biogas, biomass, solar, and hydrogen

• 100% of electricity will be from renewable sources and half of all energy will come from renewable sources by 2030

• reduce the company’s scope 1 & 2 emissions by a minimum of 42% by 2030

Vikram Agarwal, chief operations officer, commented, “Energy is a massive contributor to how we make our category-leading products, but it also has an environmental impact. That’s why we are transforming the energy footprint of our sites globally through this Energy Excellence Programme. We will do this under three pillars – energy efficiency, investing in more energy-efficient process technology, and up weighting renewable energy sources. It will make us more sustainable, more agile, more cost-efficient, and more resilient, it also adds to how we deliver for our customers and consumers and helps us reconnect performance and purpose, so marks further progress on our strategy to Renew Danone.”

The program builds on Danone’s progress to date. It already uses 68.5% renewable electricity across its sites and has six factories independently certified as carbon neutral around the globe. Over the past two decades, Danone has also reduced its energy usage by 46%.

Improving energy efficiency

Improved energy and cost efficiency will be achieved by a range of measures, including scaling up its real-time management tools. These tools have been developed by engineers at Danone and are already live in sites including Wexford (Ireland) and Opole (Poland), which was recently recognized by the World Economic Forum for its innovative use of digital technology such as robotics and AI at scale. The proprietary tools allow for real-time identification and analysis of areas of energy inefficiency. Danone will also conduct further energy assessments for its sites and evaluate newer and more energy-efficient manufacturing processes to replace existing installations.

Accelerating decarbonization

By 2030 more than half of the energy Danone will use will be renewable, and all of the electricity will be renewable (up from 68.5% today). This builds on Danone’s ongoing decarbonization journey. Since 2015 Danone has reduced scope 1 & 2 carbon emissions by 48.3% and has committed to reducing emissions by a further 42% by 2030. It will do this by increasing its use of renewable energy sources including biomass, solar thermal, and hydrogen. This energy mix is already used for heat treatments, sterilization, and sanitization of equipment, as well as internal temperature control and space heating. It will shift to local sources to help improve energy resilience and create shared value with local partners. This is already taking place in Indonesia, where Danone is working with local communities to use crop husks to produce energy, returning the ash to the farmers to use as organic fertilizer. It will also be increasing the amount of renewable energy it stores and generates through solar power at its sites.