Success with smart and efficient building technologies
With a total of 12,000 sites worldwide, our buildings and facilities - from warehouses and hubs to office buildings - are purpose-built. Given their differences, it is impracticable to apply a blanket building efficiency standard across all of our sites.
Hub Leipzig
In 2012, we focused on equipping our sites with energy-saving lighting systems and installed the first systems featuring intelligent heating and cooling technologies. In order to actually achieve carbon improvements, however, these systems must be operated correctly. With this in mind, our employees receive regular training in their use and operation and are educated on the overall importance of our emissions-reducing efforts.
Thanks to these measures we were able to lower energy consumption in our buildings and facilities in the reporting year by 6 % compared to the year previous. The success of these measures is documented in the following table on energy use.
With regard to the use of sustainable resources, we concentrate on the use of electricity from renewable energy sources ("green electricity"), biogas and, wherever regionally tenable, rainwater. The share of green electricity used throughout the Group increased 3 % to 42 % (previous year: 39 %) in the reporting year. Due to prevailing circumstances, we were unable to reach our ambitious goal of increasing this number to 60 %. For this reason, the situation will be reassessed in the first half of 2013, at which time a new target timeframe will be set.
