Vodafone 2016 Annual Report Download - page 22

A new strategic approach
Sustainable business
Our businesses play an integral role in the
daily lives of our more than 462 million mobile
customers and are a vital part of the national
infrastructure upon which the economies
of our countries of operation depend.
During 2016, we developed a new sustainable
business strategy to ensure an even closer
alignment between our core commercial
goals and the maximum possible social
and economic benets achievable at scale
as a consequence of those goals.
Under that strategy, we have identied three
areas where we believe our business activities
can have the greatest positive societal impact:
a Women’s empowerment, extending
the benets of mobile to more women
in emerging markets while striving
to become the world’s best employer for
women by 2025
a Energy innovation, optimising energy
efciency in, and reducing greenhouse gas
emissions from, our activities while helping
our customers reduce their own emissions
a Youth skills and jobs, using our
technologies and expertise to help young
adults enhance their skills and secure job
opportunities in countries with high levels
of youth unemployment
In parallel, we will focus our ongoing corporate
transparency programme on those aspects
of our business that are the source of greatest
public debate and concern, specically:
a Taxation and total economic
contribution, building on our existing
commitment to transparency in
corporate taxation including country-by-
country reporting
a Supply chain integrity and safety,
providing insights into our efforts to ensure
responsible and ethical behaviour among
our suppliers and sub-suppliers and
to ensure safety in our operations
a Mobile, masts and health, addressing
public concern regarding electromagnetic
frequency (‘EMF’) emissions from mobile
phones and base stations
a Digital rights and freedoms, building
on our commitment to transparency in law
enforcement assistance, censorship, privacy
and data protection matters
We are also committed to explaining how
we put our principles into practice to ensure
that our businesses operate responsibly.
Further details of our approach are set
out in the Group’s annual Sustainable
Business Report, published on the same
dayas this Report.
Sustainable business
Mobile and digital technologies are a powerful social good, enhancing
citizens’ understanding of, and ability to participate in, the world around
them, and transforming the workplace, boosting productivity for
businesses of all sizes in everyindustry.
Connecting women to healthcare
In 2016, 164,000 women subscribed
to Vodafone Turkey’s health and wellbeing
SMS service which sends twice-weekly
texts offering information and advice about
prenatal, antenatal and infant care and
women’s health. An interactive app with
information about child development has
also been downloaded 160,000 times.
Energy innovation and
greenhouse gas emissions
There is clear evidence that global
temperatures are rising quickly and a very
strong consensus among scientists and
policymakers that carbon dioxide emissions
from hydrocarbon fuels such as coal, oil and
gas – together with other greenhouse gases –
are having a direct impact on the climate.
The information, communications and
technology (‘ICT’) industry requires signicant
amounts of electricity to connect billions
of people, devices and machines and
transmit vast amounts of data every second.
Most power is supplied “on-grid” by national
power generation companies whose
predominant energy source is hydrocarbons,
especially coal. Telecommunications operators
also rely on hydrocarbons – in the form
of diesel used in on-site generators – to power
infrastructure “off-grid” in remote locations
or areas of unreliable on-grid power.
Vodafone is a signatory to the Paris Pledge
for Action which recognises that climate
change threatens future generations and
calls for strong action to reduce emissions
and achieve a safe and stable climate in which
temperature rises are limited to well below
2ºC. Our networks account for most of the
energy consumption in our businesses and are
therefore the main source of our greenhouse
gas emissions. As customer demand for data
increases every year, our power requirements
also grow; energy efciency programmes
(and, consequently, emissions reduction)
are therefore an important priority.
We collaborate closely with our major
equipment suppliers to ensure that energy
efciency is integral to the design specication
for new infrastructure. We have deployed
highly efcient Single Radio Access Network
(‘SRAN’) technologies (which allow 2G, 3G
and 4G services to be run from a single piece
of equipment) at more than 211,800 sites.
We are also exploring a number of on-grid and
off-grid renewable energy options.
Vodafone Group Plc
Annual Report 2016
20