Sustainability Report 2016

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Safaricom Sustainability Report 2016 54
Managing our emissions
The current scientific consensus is that global carbon
emissions need to be reduced by 80% by 2050 to avoid
catastrophic climate change and we are committed
to being a responsible corporate citizen and visibly
monitoring, reporting and reducing our carbon footprint to
help meet this target. We have calculated and published
our carbon footprint for the fifth time this year.
As the preceding table shows, our overall footprint has
increased to 67,760 tCO2e this year, up from 61,452 tCO2e
in FY15. The overall increase is a result of a significant rise
in our ‘scope 1’ emissions, which is primarily a reflection
of the dramatic escalation of diesel consumed in our
generators and the fact that we have included fire
extinguisher-related data on CO2 and FM 200 (HFC 227ea)
in our fugitive emissions for the first time ; however, we
have made a significant improvement in reducing our
carbon intensity, considering the growth in the network
footprint (12% in 2G, 30% in 3G), as well as traffic growth
(approximately 15% in voice and over 100% in data). While
our total carbon emissions have increased since FY15,
our carbon intensity per GB of data has decreased by 48%
since FY15 (2kg of CO2e per GB). We will continue to ensure
our carbon intensity decreases as our network and traffic
increases.
FY16 FY15 FY14
Carbon Intensity rate (Kg of CO2e per GB) 2 5 10
% change in carbon intensity -48% -53%
Embedding our Environmental Management System
Much of our work this year was focused on refining and embedding the systems and processes that have been put in place
in the last two reporting periods.
A major milestone for us, for instance, was achieving ISO 14001 certification for our Environmental Management System
(EMS) in the previous reporting period and so the focus this year was on making sure that EMS and ISO 14001 (Environmental
Management) programmes become part of the day-to-day operations of the company.
To achieve this goal, we initiated formal awareness and training sessions with employees and contractors, as well as
distributed messages and videos through the Safaricom Daily Connect email newsletter. The objective of the awareness
sessions was to make our environmental policies and programmes relevant to employees and to explain their individual and
collective roles in this regard.
In order to support our new strategic goal of operational excellence, we also worked on an integrated ISO Management
System during the year. The system is designed to consolidate all of the ISO standards-based systems that Safaricom has
employed — including ISO 9001 (Quality Management), ISO 14001 (Environmental Management), ISO 27001 (Information
Security) and ISO 22301 (Business Continuity) — with the intention of ensuring we apply a common approach to all of these
areas and build synergies between the various systems.
Auditing the impact of our network
As part of our monitoring and evaluation of our environmental impact, we continued to undertake Environmental Impact
Assessments (EIAs) of our infrastructural developments, such as new Base Transceiver Stations (BTS) and fibre optic networks,
and Environmental Audits (EAs) of our existing infrastructure as required by NEMA.
FY14
80,000
70,000
60,000
50,000
40,000
20,000
30,000
0
10,000
FY15
FINANCIAL YEAR
CARBON EMISSIONS (tCO
2 e)
FY16
Scope 1 Emissions Scope 2 Emissions
Scope 3 Emissions Total Emissions
For more detailed information
regarding the methodology/
guidelines and processes we use
to calculate our emissions, please
see the About our reporting
Appendix to this report, which
has been published online at
sustainabilityreport_2016/