- Overview
- SUSTAINABILITY STRATEGY
- ENVIRONMENTAL
- SOCIAL
- Social overview
- Diversity, equity, and inclusion
- Employee experience
- Community engagement
- Human rights
- Suppliers
- GOVERNANCE
- Governance overview
- Corporate governance
- Be 3M: Corporate Code of Conduct
- Innovation management
- Enterprise risk management
- Stakeholder engagement
- REPORTING & POLICIES
Climate and energy
Our approach
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Climate change remains among the greatest challenges globally. We must act with urgency to address it — for our climate and our communities.
We continue to focus on innovating to decarbonize industry, accelerating global climate solutions, and improving our environmental footprint. We’ll continue to drive ambitious climate solutions in our operations, in our products, and in communities around the world.
3M has long been a leader in addressing both challenges and opportunities presented by climate change and energy conservation. Our proactive leadership is best defined by six areas of action:
- Executive-level commitment to these important topics and our related principles, policies, commitments, and risk-mitigation planning efforts, including membership in RE100
- Collaborations with organizations that are committed to the important work of addressing climate change, including the Global Alliance for Sustainable Energy, TPG Rise Climate, the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
- Industry-leading efforts to measure and reduce our own greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, including a goal to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050
- Extensive public policy engagement on both climate change and energy conservation
- A decade’s-long track record of improving energy efficiency at our sites
- Serving our customers through a wide range of innovative products that help them improve energy efficiency and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions
At 3M, we support the global consensus set forth in the 2015 Paris Agreement and are acting on the latest findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) into our goals, operations, and actions.
Progress toward goals
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100 million tons towards our goal to:Help our customers reduce their GHGs by 250 million tons of CO₂ equivalent emissions through the use of our products by 2025
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14.2% towards our goal to:Improve energy efficiency indexed to net sales by 30% by 2025
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26.1% reduction towards our goal to:Reduce Scope 1 and 2 market-based GHG emissions by at least 50% by 2030, 80% by 2040, and achieve carbon neutrality in our operations by 20501,2
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47.6% towards our goal to:Increase renewable energy to 50% of total electricity use by 2025 and to 100% by 2050
Key actions in 2021
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Recognition in 2021
- Market Trailblazer Award by RE100
- Better Project Award (Brookings site) by U.S. Department of Energy’s Better Building, Better Plants Challenge
- Energy Innovators of the Year by AEE Regional Awards [Richard Holmes (Little Rock) and Tyler Blakely (Brockville)]
- Energy Management Insight Award by Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) forum [Sites in Canada (6) and the U.S. (21)]
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Better Buildings Initiative
3M partnered with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on its Better Plants Challenge — part of the DOE’s Better Buildings Initiative designed to drive leadership in energy innovation. We are a Better Plants Challenge Energy and Water Goal Achiever and participate in the Better Buildings Low Carbon Pilot. 3M is also involved in the DOE’s Better Climate Challenge to reduce portfolio-wide GHG emissions (Scope 1 and 2) by at least 50% within 10 years. -
Investing in climate solutions
We joined more than 20 other global companies in investing in TPG Rise Climate, a multi-billion-dollar climate impact investing fund that focuses on clean energy, decarbonized transport, greening industrials, and agricultural and natural solutions.
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Global Alliance for Sustainable Energy
3M joined with our customer Enel Green Power and 15 other organizations in founding the Global Alliance for Sustainable Energy — with the aim of redefining “sustainable energy”, leading a transition away from fossil fuels in line with the 2030 agenda set out in the UN SDGs.
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Strategic Collaboration with UNFCCC
Starting at COP26 in November 2021, 3M and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) entered into a three-year collaboration to advance the Paris Agreement and UN SDGs — working to overcome the challenges faced by manufacturers in achieving net zero.
Read more about our progress
