Investments enabling reduction and offsetting operations are managed by the Groupe’s CSR Department, in order to focus efforts on projects audited by third parties and with recognized certifications such as: Gold Standards for the UN SDGs, VCS - Verified Carbon Standard and CCBA - Climate, Community & Biodiversity Alliance. Publicis Groupe is supported in these projects by the external firm, in order to validate the robustness of the projects selected and to monitor their evolution over time. This centralized and rigorous approach also makes it possible to work on a future internal carbon price.
In terms of renewable energy, the Groupe’s objective is to achieve 100% of renewable energy from direct sources. However, some markets are not yet sufficiently mature or sometimes the local regulations do not yet allow to change energy supplier.. In order to accelerate this transformation, once the increase in renewable energies from direct sources is known, the Groupe purchases RECs each year (Renewables Energy Certificates) or GOs (Guarantees of Origin) in order to reduce the impact of the volume of energy consumed from non-renewable sources, and in its top countries in terms of workforce: the United States, India, the United Kingdom, France, Canada and China.
With regard to the reduction of scope 3 impacts, the project began in early 2021 with a selection of major suppliers already actively reducing their own impacts. In 2021, Publicis Groupe chose not to take into account the first encouraging elements collected in order to deepen the analysis and traceability method, as suppliers are not at the same stage of progress.
In 2020, Publicis Groupe committed to a five-year multi-year project to offset its carbon emissions which includes :
These various reduction and offsetting actions enable Publicis Groupe to achieve carbon neutrality for scopes 1 + 2 in 2021 (as in 2020), in accordance with the requirements of the Paris Agreement.
Publicis Groupe also follows the evolution of the first forests in which it participated in 2008, located in Cameroon in particular, with, at the time, the financing of the planting of 6,000 trees to preserve the Sanaga Forest, between Douala and Yaoundé.
