Energy & climate protection
We live up to our climate responsibility
We consistently use renewable energy, reduce our consumption and minimise emissions to contribute our share to the achievement of the Paris Agreement.
Our Energy and Climate Strategy
In 2022, our business activities caused at least 1,458 tons of CO2e, which corresponds to 1.52 tons per employee. The emissions intensity in relation to turnover (t CO2e per one million euros in Group turnover) amounted to 3.25 t CO2e per one million euros in turnover. This means that we emitted around 3% more CO2e emissions compared to 2021. This development is primarily due to increased mobility and travel behavior following the coronavirus pandemic and the inclusion of two new subsidiaries in the emissions accounting. Overall, however, we can report a comparatively low CO2e balance. We have achieved this primarily through the following measures:
- a change in our employees' mobility behavior with regard to air travel (reduction since 2018: 1,106 tons),
- abandoning our own data centers in favour of a cloud-based solution (savings since 2018: 803 tons)
- switching to electricity from renewable energies (savings since 2018: 520 tons, market-based)
- and the conversion of our vehicle fleet to 94% e-cars (savings since 2018: 157 tons).
In addition, a change in methodology, a change in the organizational balance sheet boundaries and the improved data basis over the years have contributed to the result. Due to the incomplete data basis for the accounting of our emissions in the first few years, we sometimes worked with conservative estimates. Following the improvement in the data basis over the last few years, we were therefore also able to report a reduction in corporate GHG emissions in some cases without these having been achieved through actual reduction measures. In addition, part of the reduction to date can be attributed to the special effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
We want to continue to do our part in the future to keep the global temperature rise below 1.5 °C compared to pre-industrial temperatures. However, in view of the end of the pandemic situation in 2023 and potential further acquisitions by Scout24, a renewed increase in GHG emissions cannot be ruled out. We also want to raise our own level of ambition once again. The following targets have therefore been defined for 2022:
- in the short term: maintain -60% of absolute CO2e emissions compared to the base year 2018 across all scopes by 2025 and
- in the long term: reduce a total of 90% of our absolute emissions in Scopes 1, 2 and 3 by 2045 compared to the base year 2018.
To achieve our targets, we will continue to follow the approach: avoid, reduce, offset. As planned, we will begin offsetting all remaining emissions in certified climate protection projects in 2025.
What we achieved so far
Our measures
Data centres
We completed the migration of our data centres to a cloud-based solution in 2020.
Green electricity
In future, we would like all Scout24 Group locations to only use electricity from renewable sources. For our locations in Germany and Austria, coverage is already at 73%.
Vehicle fleet
We will convert 100% of our vehicle fleet to e-mobility by the end of 2025. At the end of 2023, 94% of the fleet already consisted of e-cars.
Flights
In accordance with our travel policy from 2021 , business trips within Germany are only to be taken by plane if the journey cannot be completed within 4.5 hours by train.
Print products
Since January 1, 2021, we have been offsetting the CO2e emissions for our limited number of print products.
Catering
Lunches at our Berlin office have been entirely vegetarian three times a week since 1 January 2021.
Responsibility for our products
In 2021, Scout24 created new options to make it easier to view properties and conclude rental contracts, by introducing live online viewings and the digital rental contract. Online viewings not only make the process simpler for landlords and tenants, but they are also more environmentally friendly: If three prospective tenants each travel ten kilometres by car to an in-person viewing, that creates 9.5 kg of CO2e. If, instead, they each spend 20 minutes visiting a property virtually, that only produces 0.01 kg CO2e. As landlords say that it takes seven viewing appointments on average to find a new tenant, online viewings therefore mean a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Since the climate balance sheet year 2021, we also report the greenhouse gas emissions caused by our marketplaces on the product side. Website hosting, our data transfers and the use of marketplaces via our users’ devices all contribute to this number.
Waste and recycling
We avoid waste as far as possible and ensure that waste is separated and disposed of in accordance with the law. For example, we have been working with our partner AfB Social and Green IT for five years, which professionally recycles and, where possible, refurbishes discarded IT equipment at our Berlin and Munich sites. In some cases, we offer our employees refurbished devices for private purchase.
In 2023, a total of 293 IT and mobile devices were processed as part of the AfB partnership. AfB was able to remarket 76% of the devices after data destruction, hardware testing, repair, upgrading and cleaning. This resulted in a saving of almost 25 tons of CO2e emissions.