No corner of the globe is immune to the devastating effects of climate change. It has become the defining crisis of our time. Every year, billions of tons of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere because of human activity related to coal, oil, and gas production. Emissions are currently at a record high with no indication of slowing down.
But we are far from powerless, thanks to private sector actors, including corporations, investors, philanthropists, and industry interest groups who are actively engaged in sustainability policies and practice focusing on achieving net zero emissions. A good example is Safaricom PLC.
As part of its ongoing commitment to the SDGs, Safaricom continues to work towards improving energy and resource efficiency in its network and facilities to reduce carbon emissions and consumption. With a plan to become a net-zero carbon-emitting company by 2050, Safaricom is taking charge of environmental and social issues. It has partnered with different actors to further sustainable development; and strives to improve the systems that have led to climate change, specifically growth-based economic models.
This commitment aligns with the recent call by the UN’s call for urgent climate action before 2030 if the Paris Agreement’s long-term agreements are to be achieved.
According to a 2022 UN Climate Change report, many net-zero targets remain uncertain and postpone the future critical action that needs to take place now. It further shows that current commitments by different governments across the globe are not enough.
The report also notes that although many countries are bending the curve of global greenhouse gas emissions downward, these efforts won’t be sufficient to curb global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.
If anything, the report emphasises the need for robust measures in actualising climate action. And in full recognition of this call and the fact that the future growth and resilience of successful companies will be determined by their ability to navigate the looming global shift to a low-carbon, clean-technology-based economy, Safaricom hasn’t backed down in its commitment.
With a focus on reducing, reusing, recycling and repurposing its waste, Safaricom, in the 2022 Financial Year, managed to recycle 88.1% of the solid waste from its operations, including paper, organic and plastics. It continues to adhere to a plastic-free environment and collects and recycles waste, including e-waste. The company also reduced its use of plastic by adopting modern, digitised work methods. This meant shifting from physical paper to electronic signoffs and adopting digital ways of bypassing paper use.
To further cement its decarbonisation plans, Safaricom is upping its climate action plan by expanding its renewable energy solutions. It has implemented Energy as a Service (EaaS) and mini-grid programmes to stabilise the remote cluster, thereby improving service availability. Consequently, the company is currently assessing an energy services companies (ESCO) model with three partners.
Intending to transition 4,200 sites by 2025, Safaricom is well on the move to attaining energy efficiency across its operations. This is on top of modernising power systems by replacing lead acid batteries with lithium ones and increasingly transporting freight via sea rather than air, thereby reducing supply chain emissions.
As intensifying global climate impacts hammer home the message that greenhouse gas emissions must fall rapidly, Safaricom is also continuing its plan to offset carbon emissions by planting trees. Commenting on the importance of this program during the launch of the FY22 Sustainability Report, Safaricom’s Chairman, Michael Joseph, affirmed the company’s position in reversing the negative impacts of climate change.
“As a responsible corporate citizen and in line with our commitment to SDG7: Affordable and Clean Energy, we are determined to help drive emissions abatement by increasingly moving to sources of green energy and planting five million trees by 2025,” he said.
In 2018, the company partnered with the Kenya Forest Service (KFS) to implement a tree-growing and forest conservation programme to improve Kenya’s forest cover. The programme’s long-term objective is to plant five million indigenous trees in five years, which will rehabilitate 5,000 hectares of degraded forests.
In 2022, Safaricom planted 372 000 trees, bringing the total number of trees planted to date to just over one million, as shown in the image below:
Image source: Safaricom Sustainability Report 2022
The drive to plant more trees is hinged on the adaptation and mitigation benefits it provides. On top of increasing the resilience of Kenya’s forests to climate change impacts, tree growing reduces the harmful effects of greenhouse gas emissions by creating carbon sinks and helps to offset the CO2 emission. Safaricom’s expansion on clean energy usage has also accelerated this move.
Apart from modernising its battery usage and increasing power resiliency, Safaricom increased the percentage of base stations connected to the KPLC grid, capping diesel purchases and expanding our use of solar.
Furthermore, it is piloting a radio access intelligent shutdown system based on machine learning that helps to ensure idle cells /layers are shut down while maintaining stability and saving energy. Better still, the company has established Power Purchase Agreements and Independent Power Product partnerships with three different parties to develop renewable energy for the sites, thereby enabling a move away from fossil-based fuel and grid power.
Looking ahead, Safaricom prioritises circularity and exploring opportunities to use waste as a resource, register its carbon reduction initiatives with the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), and track emissions related to its value chains. The company will also continue its partnership with the KFS towards achieving its target of growing five million trees in five years while implementing its MOU with the UN Environment on Air Quality Monitoring Pilot.
All these efforts are geared toward complementing the combined climate pledges of 193 Parties under the Paris Agreement that aims to put the world on track for around 1.5 degrees Celsius warming by the end of the century.
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