Accelerate to a low carbon world

The planet needs significant science-based action to create a sustainable, low-carbon future. We aim to reach net zero across our direct operations by 2030.

Accelerating to a low carbon world

We have a responsibility to protect the future of the planet. In our 'Society 2030: Spirit of Progress' action plan, we set out how we pioneer grain-to-glass sustainability, and a critical part of this is to accelerate to a low carbon world.

We are proud to be on the right path to limit global temperature rise to less than 1.5°C and have committed to achieve net zero across our entire business and value chain by 2050 or sooner. By 2030, our ambition is to achieve net zero emissions across our direct operations (Scope 1 and 2) and to work in partnership with our suppliers to halve the emissions in our value chain (Scope 3).

Bold commitments

Our 2030 commitments are deliberately bold to prompt us to act decisively and to give us the credibility to be an advocate for global climate action.

We support the Paris Agreement and we are a proud signatory to the Business Ambition for limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Core to our approach is innovation to help influence the changes needed to create and develop tomorrow’s low-carbon solutions.

As an important way to increase stakeholders’ and companies’ focus on climate change, we embrace the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) incorporating the framework into our reporting.

Find out more about our Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) reporting on the ESG reporting approach page of our website.

How we will achieve net zero

Our strategic approach to reach net zero is focused on four areas of action - our operations, our supply chain, our communities and leading through advocacy.

1. Our operations

Key to helping us achieve net zero carbon in our direct operations across the world is embedding energy efficiency in our culture and working towards using 100% renewable energy, fuel and heat. Essential to this is reducing the amount of energy we consume, making our facilities more efficient and recovering as much energy as possible.

Building on our existing programmes, we are committed to only using renewable energy by 2030. To do this we have many initiatives already in action, including:

  • Converting our energy renewable alternatives such as bioenergy and solar
  • Creating additional renewable energy capacity to power our sites
  • Moving our vehicles on to renewable and low emission alternatives

We will aim to use the right fit technology with the lowest environmental impact across its lifecycle in each location, innovating and trailing new technologies through our innovation programme, Diageo Sustainable Solutions (DSS).

2. Our supply chain

In order for us to reach our sustainability commitments across our supply chain, we will support opportunities that reduce our emissions produced by the materials we buy, the products we source and the services that we need to produce our much-loved brands.

We can make significant impact by rethinking our way of doing business to embed a more collaborative and circular way to source the materials and services that we rely on. This includes working with our suppliers to accelerate decarbonisation, reducing the impact of our packaging by eliminating unnecessary packing, increasing recycled content and recyclability, prioritising low carbon transport and supporting sustainable practice for the producers of our raw materials and ingredients.

3. Our communities

We are actively engaging with the communities where we live, work and sell - helping them to make a difference and have the impact we need.

We are focusing and accelerating our work to building strong alliances and collaborations with our employees, suppliers, NGOs and societies and we are signatories of both the Race to Zero and Race to Resilience initiatives.

We want to deliver benefits for people and the wider environment alike as we move towards net zero carbon through local sourcing, seeking nature-based solutions where we operate and source our raw materials, and sharing knowledge, experience and learnings with trade associations and industry forums.

4. Advocacy

We want to help accelerate climate action globally, and we know that working together is the only way to mitigate our impact on climate change and adapt to a changing climate.

We invest in industry leadership activities to inspire and challenge businesses, holding forums with governments, consumers, NGOs and business partners, and offering sustainability training to our partners.

As members of several trade associations, we actively support our industry to enable collective action towards shared climate goals. We are an active member of the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative (SAI) platform forming alliances with our farmers in Africa to help drive climate action.

We are also proud signatories of:

Our ‘Society 2030: Spirit of Progress’ targets

  • Become net zero carbon in our direct operations (Scopes 1 and 2)
  • Reduce our value chain (Scope 3) carbon emissions by 50%
  • Use 100% renewable energy across all our direct operations

Society 2030
in action

| Story