Bayer policy on climate change

"We help with solutions"

In our mission statement, "Bayer: Science For A Better Life", we define our role as a good and responsible corporate citizen. In keeping with the principles of sustainable development, we strive to balance economic, ecological and social benefits with each other through our activities.

Bayer also wants to meet its responsibilities in matters of climate change. We take climate change as an environmental and economic challenge seriously. It affects the foundations of our commercial activity. On the one hand, endeavors in the field of climate protection have to be strengthened. On the other, greater attention needs to be paid to innovative solutions to deal with the consequences of climate change. Bayer intends to make specific contributions to both.

Our starting point is a favorable one. Bayer has already been recognized internationally as "best-in-class" in climate protection and as a leading company in its sector. In production, we have been able to increase energy efficiency in recent years through technological innovations and have significantly reduced greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, Bayer products make a direct contribution to saving energy and conserving resources in our daily lives, for example in the form of insulating materials.

We intend to intensify our efforts even further. We will use our innovative capabilities and know-how as an inventor company to develop new products and solutions for climate protection and for dealing with climate change. With this in mind, Bayer AG’s Board of Management has launched the “Bayer Climate Program”. This is scheduled to run for several years and brings together the wide-ranging areas of expertise of our subgroups and service companies.

We have set ourselves the following climate objectives:

Global greenhouse gas emissions 2005 - 2020 (t CO₂-equivalents):

Bayer MaterialScience will decrease its specific greenhouse gas emissions per ton of sold product by 25 %.
Bayer HealthCare will decrease its absolute greenhouse gas emissions by 5 %.
Bayer CropScience will decrease its absolute greenhouse gas emissions by 15 %.

Global investment:

Bayer will invest EUR 1 billion in climate-related R&D and projects between 2008 and 2010.

The well-established “Ecological Evaluation of New Investments” procedure (for capital expenditure > EUR 10 million) will be supplemented with climate evaluation criteria.

The Bayer Climate Program has already initiated several lighthouse projects, which provide groundbreaking examples of initiatives aimed at tackling the consequences of climate change and supporting climate protection: Bayer EcoCommercial Building, stress-tolerant plants, biofuels and the Bayer Climate Check for production processes and investment projects.

The political framework is crucial to us. For this reason, we consistently support an effective climate policy at global level in a constructive dialogue with politicians, non-governmental organizations and other companies.