Aviva 2013 Annual Report Download - page 50

Aviva plc
Annual report and accounts 2013
48
Our wider impact continued
spend time hosting ‘town halls’ where they
share their response to the results and commit to
actions they will take as an executive. To support
conversations with employees about changes
in the business, we have employee consultative
forums in both the UK and Europe.
Employee involvement in business performance
is encouraged through a number of share plans
including Save As You Earn, share matching plan
and share awards are given as a long-term
incentive for some senior managers.
Safety and wellbeing
We provide a safe and healthy environment for
all our employees, contractors and people on
our premises. This is reected in our health and
safety business standard. We aim to provide a
supportive working culture and we encourage
a healthy work/life balance. We operate exible
working practices including career break options
and employee assistance programmes.
Environment and climate change
We judge the importance of environmental issues
based on the impact on our customers, on direct
and indirect business impacts and stakeholder
concerns. Climate change is society’s most
pressing environmental challenge. We have
a commercial interest in making sure certain
risks don’t become uninsurable and in
understanding the potential long-term
impacts on our investments.
Extreme weather events pose a serious risk to
our business, with the potential for uctuations
in claims and challenges to risk pricing. We are
using our expertise as insurers, such as our
knowledge of historical weather events and
cutting-edge predictive modelling to map future
scenarios, reducing the risk to our business and
our customers. For example, Canada suffered
two 1-in-100 year ood events within two
months of each other in 2013. Due to our
effective risk management approach, in these
cases we were able to pay customer claims,
deliver great service and still make a prot in
our insurance business.
Our strategy to mitigate impacts on climate
change includes improving energy efciency,
investing in the low-carbon economy and
understanding our indirect impacts as an
asset owner. We are building environmental
considerations into our products, such as Aviva
Canada’s new Green Assure which offers more
environmentally responsible replacements to
damaged or destroyed property.
Controlling our impact
We publish annual Group performance data for
CO2e emissions, waste and water consumption.
Our carbon footprint boundaries identify
the scope of the data we monitor and the
emissions we offset. We also use Accounting for
Sustainability’s connected reporting framework.
Aviva plc – Global greenhouse gas emissions data
from 1 January 2013 to 31 December 2013
Tonnes CO2e2013 2012 2011
Scope 1 21,787 23,849 44,471
Scope 2 56,842 75,733 97,988
Scope 3 37,260 26,920 22,655
Absolute CO2 footprint 115,889* 126,502* 165,115
CO2e tonnes per employee 3.1 2.9 4.6
CO2e tonnes per £m GWP 5.26 5.56 6.28
Carbon offsetting ** (115,889) (132,827) (173,371)
Total net emissions 0(6,325) (8,256)
Scope 1 – operational emissions from owned sources eg. gas, vehicle eet as part of
product/service.
Scope 2 – operational emission from non-owned sources eg. electricity.
Scope 3 – business activity emissions from non-owned sources – eg. business travel.
*Limited assurance provided by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.
** carbon offsetting through the acquisition and surrender of emissions units on
the voluntary market.
We report on all of the Greenhouse Gas (GHG)
emission sources on a carbon dioxide emissions
equivalents (CO2e) required under the Companies
Act 2006 (Strategic Report and Directors’ Reports)
2013 Regulations, which are material to our
business operations. We report our emissions
using the operational control approach as dened
by our organisational boundary. We do not have
responsibility for any emission sources that are
not included in our business operations or
included in our carbon footing boundaries.
Our reporting follows the GHG Protocol
Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard,
and emission factors from UK Government’s GHG
Conversion Factors for Company Reporting 2013.
We have used the two most appropriate
intensity measures to our business CO2e per
employee and CO2e per £ million GWP which
are expressed in the table above.
Aviva has also reported on its Scope 3 emissions
which goes beyond the requirements of the
2013 Regulations.
We purchase 48% of our electricity from
renewable sources round the world. However, the
UK Government conversion factors require that
the CO2e element of UK renewable electricity
should be reported as grid average. For our
unavoidable remaining carbon emissions we
offset these to the value of 100% through the
acquisition and surrender of emission units on
the voluntary carbon market (VERs).
Climate-resilient
communities
We believe in a more
joined-up approach to help
build resilience against
climate change.
Aviva has supported a
series of ‘Building Climate
Resilience in Cities’
workshops. Insurance
industry leaders and city
stakeholders in Boston, San
Diego and Toronto came
together to identify
opportunities to collaborate
and build the resilience of
their cities. Key headlines:
§Increasing the resilience
of physical infrastructure
is a priority
§District level
collaboration can be
more effective than
action at an asset level
§Resilience ratings could
help assess and
recognise improvements
made by stakeholders
§This combination of
activities could preserve
and enhance the
insurability of assets.
In 2013, Aviva France
launched a partnership with
the Red Cross to improve
community resilience to
natural disasters. The
project educates people
and professional bodies on
how to rebuild and work
together after a natural
disaster, such as a ood.