Climate change
Zurich takes a market-based approach to addressing the risks that we and our customers face from climate change. Our focus is to understand the emerging weather, financial and regulatory risks associated with climate change and to develop products and services that help customers cope with these risks. Take a look at some of the innovative climate-related products we offer.
We carried out an internal, in-depth assessment of our own carbon footprint, using 2007 as our base year. The resulting Group-wide emissions from all sources we considered were estimated to be 243,000 tons, or 4.17 tons per employee. We have committed to reducing our carbon footprint by 10 percent by 2013 compared to 2007. Through a combination of cleaner energy sources, energy efficiency measures and better utilization of space in our office buildings, reduced air travel, and the gradual transition to more fuel-efficient cars in our vehicle fleet, we already reached this target, reducing emissions by 17 percent per employee as of December 2012. You can see the results of our efforts in Zurich's Group-wide carbon footprint report 2012. A new Group-wide emissions reductions target will be set in the near future based on a bottom-up analysis of those countries in which Zurich operates.