Background
The green transition is a process of change in production, consumption and personal habits that the world has now undertaken. The aim of this transformation is to avert the worst effects on climate and the environment of global warming caused by the increase in greenhouse gas emissions dating back to the industrial revolution.The North Star to getting there is the number 1.5 – which is the limit within which the planet's heating needs to be contained in terms of the average rise in degrees Celsius.
The way to go about our goal is twofold: increasing the energy efficiency of consumption and economic production on the one hand and replacing fossil fuels with renewable alternatives on the other.
The goal is to reduce net CO2 emissions to zero by 2050. As an intermediate step, the European Union aims to cut emissions by 55% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels, according to its Fit for 55 plan.
Poste Italiane's commitment
The European plan to limit warming to 1.5° C above the pre-industrial era is ambitious, but Poste Italiane's aim goes even further.
Poste Italiane seeks to reduce its net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2030 – 20 years ahead of European and global programmes.
Poste Italiane's intermediate milestone is to reduce its overall emissions by 30% by 2025 from 2020 levels.
Areas of impact
Poste Italiane's energy efficiency actions focus on mail delivery vehicles and post offices, or as we say "logistics" and "facilities”.
Logistics
In line with previous years, in 2023 Poste Italiane continued to implement sustainability initiatives, with particular attention to reducing the environmental impact deriving from the corporate fleet. In this regard, a fleet of 14,189 alternative fuel vehicles is already operational, including electric, methane and LPG
The Company has gone from 11% green vehicles in 2016 to 44.4% in 2023, increasing the number of these vehicles by 24% compared to 2022, in line with the goal of replacing the entire company fleet with low-emission vehicles by 2024.
As regards the details of the green fleet transformation project, during the year, Poste Italiane completed the fleet of approximately 2,200 electric vehicles, approximately 800 hybrid electric or methane vehicles and approximately 700 low-emission vehicles.
The green fleet reached 44.4% of the total Poste Italiane fleet in 2023: there are over 8,000 bi-fuel vehicles including cars and vans and over 5,800 electric vehicles. The total number of vehicles with reduced environmental impact introduced starting from 2019 is equal to 26,225 vehicles, and by 2024, Poste Italiane expects to reach 27,800 vehicles by 2024.
Facilities
For real estate, the goal is to reduce the Group's total direct and indirect emissions (Scope 1 and 2) by 5,000 tons of CO2 equivalent by 2028 compared to 2023.
Energy efficiency is crucial to achieving this goal. In 2023, 99% of the Group’s purchased electricity came from 100% renewable sources.
Additionally, to contribute to makinge the Group's office activities increasingly energy-efficient, the Smart Building project was introduced. Financed by the European Investment Bank, the project, in continuity with previous years, aims to implement a Building and Energy Management System (BEMS) in 2,000 small to medium to small sized Poste Italiane buildings through a single platform for the integrated supervision, management and control of plants, optimising maintenance management and energy efficiency.