Energy and climate protection

Climate change is the greatest and most urgent environmental challenge facing our planet. Swift and decisive action is needed to set our society onto a low-carbon growth path. With its capacity for innovation and investment, business has a critical role to play in this massive transformation.

We aim to take a leadership position, adapting our business to the demands and opportunities of a low-carbon economy. As a result, we are accelerating our efforts in the parts of our business that use the most energy: our bottling plants, fleet and cold drink equipment.

In our fleet, we are changing driver behaviour with our Safe and Eco-Driving programme.
Our new energy-efficient cold drink equipment emits up 50% less CO₂emissions than 2004.
As a further step towards CO₂ neutral production we have installed a wastewater neutralisation system which recovers the exhaust CO2 from the boiler rooms.

Energy-savings programmes

In our bottling plants, we are implementing energy-savings programmes to reduce the CO₂ emissions to produce each litre of beverage. Any example?

Although our bottling operations use more energy than our offices and other facilities, we are taking steps to reduce CO₂ emissions there too. For example, our Green IT programme is changing the IT equipment that we use, as well as the way that we use it. By using audio, video and online conferencing, we are significantly reducing business travel with its associated CO₂ emissions.

Hybrid vehicles and alternative fuels

We are evaluating and expanding the use of alternative fuels and hybrid vehicles in our fleet. Coca-Cola Hellenic has been conducting trials of hybrid trucks in Europe, where the technology is not commercially available.

Since these initiatives are still at an early stage, Coca-Cola Hellenic is also reducing the impact of our conventional fleet. For example, we are downsizing engines and monitoring actual fuel and COs emissions.

Safe and Eco-Driving

Changing driver behaviour can also make a major contribution to reducing CO₂ emissions. Through our Safe and Eco-Driving programme, we are teaching drivers of our trucks and company cars such techniques as driving at optimum speed and early gear changes. Such Eco-driving courses have been given to all drivers since 2003.

Energy-efficient cold drink equipment

Our consumers expect to find chilled beverages available in restaurants and shops when they are thirsty. As a result, placing coolers and other cold drink equipment on customer premises is an important part of our business strategy. Although we do not operate this equipment, we still have a responsibility to reduce its carbon footprint.

We therefore work with our suppliers to improve the equipment’s energy efficiency. By developing new cooler models as well as energy management devices, we now purchase coolers up to 50 percent more energy-efficient compared to 2004. We also train our employees to ensure that coolers in the marketplace operate as efficiently as possible.

Waste Water neutralization with CO2

As a further step towards CO₂ neutral production in plant Vals, we have operated a new gas neutralisation system since spring 2008.
The wastewater from the plant is neutralised with CO₂ from the exhaust of our boiler room. In this way, a chemical neutralisation using hydrochloric acid can be dispensed and we simultaneously reduce the CO₂ emissions of our heating system. Until now, 120 tons of CO₂ have already been saved.

Working in partnership

At an international level, Coca-Cola Hellenic is a founder signatory of the UN Global Compact’s Caring for Climate, the largest global business coalition on climate.