Danone has announced new plans to transform the energy footprint of its sites worldwide and make operations more agile, energy and cost efficient, resilient and sustainable. - TheGrocer

The French food and drink giant’s new global programme Re-Fuel Danone will be expected to use digital innovation and engineering expertise to drive energy efficiency and accelerate the company’s decarbonisation journey, it said.

It will also expand on partnerships with local renewable energy providers to increase resilience and work with communities in which it operates.

Danone’s head of operations Vikram Agarwal said the energy programme would be conducted under three pillars – energy efficiency, investing in more energy efficient process technology and upweighting renewable energy sources.

He added this would “make us more sustainable, more agile, more cost efficient and more resilient. It also adds to how we deliver for our customers and consumers and helps us reconnect performance and purpose, so marks further progress on our strategy to Renew Danone”.

The Re-Fuel programme’s aims include improvements to energy efficiency by 30% by 2025 and increased use of renewable energy such as biogas, biomass, solar and hydrogen.

To improve energy efficiency, Danone will instigate a number of measures including scaling up its real-time management tools which enable real time identification and analysis of areas of energy inefficiency.

Danone will also conduct further energy assessments for its sites and evaluate newer and more energy efficient manufacturing processes to replace existing installations.

The programme plans to ensure 100% of electricity used will be from renewable sources, up from 68.5% today, and half of all energy will come from renewable sources by 2030. The company already has six factories independently certified as carbon neutral around the globe.

Additionally, Danone is planning to reduce its scope 1 and 2 emissions by a minimum of 42% by 2030, which builds on its reduction of these emissions by 48.3% since 2015.

Renewable energy sources such as biomass, solar thermal and hydrogen will become more common in the company and it will shift to local sources of energy, such as in Indonesia, where Danone is working with local communities to use crop husks to produce energy, returning the ash to the farmers to use as organic fertiliser.

It will also be increasing the amount of renewable energy it stores and generates through solar power at its sites.