Munich Re Foundation - 2020 carbon footprint

Since the foundation was established, we have been calculating our carbon footprint. This is made up of the following components: Emissions from business operations (electricity and heating in the offices), from business trips by employees and from our projects. In the projects, it is mostly the travel of conference and seminar participants that makes an impact. In 2020, our carbon footprint has been drastically reduced due to Corona. The majority of our events were organised digitally.

We emitted 0.16 tonnes of CO₂ for business trips, and the operation of the office caused 16.3 tonnes (here we base our figures on the methods used at Munich Re, see Munich Re sustainability report). Events and projects only produced 0.66 tonnes of CO₂ this year (according to the old calculation for live events). These were mainly caused by the dialogue forums at the beginning of 2020, which were still organised as face-to-face meetings. 

The calculation of the carbon footprint for digital events is complex. The results for our events would be in the two to three-digit kilogram range. Therefore, we have decided to increase the compensation to one tonne in the area of "projects". Our founder Munich Re offsets these emissions and also those of the office and business trips by purchasing CO₂ certificates in 2020.

CB, 22 January 2021