Net Zero Carbon

Climate change is the defining crisis of our time, it’s happening much more quickly than previously anticipated and will have a major impact on our business.

At Asda we have been working to decarbonise our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions since 2007 and have reduced them by 40% since our 2015 baseline. This has been driven in part by the continued transition of our HGV fleet to biogas and implementing low carbon refrigeration and energy efficiency measures across our stores.

We have calculated and reported our emissions in line with the GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting standard (revised edition) and emission factors from the UK Governments GHG Conversion factors company reporting 2020 and the Carbon Trust’s internal emission factor data base. The emissions are reported using the financial control approach. The calculations include data from 1st Jan-31st of December each year. 

Our ambition is to have net zero carbon emissions operations by 2040 and we have a clear roadmap to achieve this.  

In 2022, we committed to setting a science-based carbon reduction target across all scopes, including a specific Forests, Land and Agriculture (FLAG) target. While these targets were submitted and validated in early 2024, our rapid growth into the convenience market means the targets we submitted no longer accurately reflect the size and shape of our carbon footprint at that time.   

As such, we now intend to resubmit new targets for validation once we have completed the integration of data from the acquisition of new sites that now form part of our Asda Express convenience format. The interim validated 2030 targets, which do not account for the footprint of our Asda Express operations, are focussed on decarbonising the FLAG and Non-FLAG emissions of our food, George and GM business in line with a 1.5c pathway. We will continue to work towards this ambition. 

With 98% of our emissions from Scope 3, working collaboratively with suppliers and partners to drive climate action is imperative.  Broadly, there are two critical areas for driving action: within supplier production processes and in the products we sell. 

As well as our work as part of the BRC Mondra Coalition, in early 2024 we announced a new initiative to increase action in our supply base. Working alongside the sustainability ratings platform EcoVadis we require our largest suppliers – those accountable for around 80% of our product carbon emissions – to share sustainability data with us through the EcoVadis platform. Many of our suppliers are already taking action and use the platform, but this process will ensure two-way visibility of data.