Climate protection

Materiality and goals

GRI 3-3

As a player in the transport sector, the Mercedes-Benz Group supports the Paris Climate Agreement: It is convinced of the objectives of the agreement. About one fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions in Europe are produced as a result of the transport of people and goods on streets and roads. The Mercedes-Benz Group is taking deliberate measures to counteract this trend and has made climate change mitigation a core element of its business strategy. The Group’s ambition is to make the entire Mercedes-Benz new vehicle fleet CO₂-neutral on the balance sheet across all stages of the value chain by 2039. 

In order to achieve this goal, the Mercedes-Benz Group is transforming the products and services that are at the heart of its business activities. The company also takes into account climate change mitigation in all of the life cycle phases of its automobiles –  from the supply chain and its own manufacturing operations to the use and disposal of the vehicles. The Mercedes-Benz Group sets itself ambitious targets for CO₂ reduction in the individual phases and systematically analyses the resulting CO₂ emissions and other environmental impacts along its entire value chain.

CO₂ neutrality on the balance sheet along the value chain

The company’s goal is to cut by at least half the CO₂ emissions per passenger car along the entire value chain by the end of this decade, compared to 2020. The goal of reducing the CO₂ emissions of the Mercedes-Benz new car fleet by 40% compared to 2018 in relation to the use phase (well-to-wheel) has been confirmed by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi).

The most important levers for this are electrification of the vehicle fleet, charging with green electricity, improving the battery technology, the decarbonisation of the supply chain and extensive use of renewable energies in production.

The Mercedes-Benz Group confirmed its corporate goal of improving the framework conditions for decarbonising the economy and society worldwide by joining the initiatives “The Climate Pledge” and "Transform to Net Zero" in 2020.

The Mercedes-Benz Group uses various future scenarios to assess the robustness of its climate-related activities and the associated risks and opportunities. In doing so, it distinguishes between different types of risks when identifying climate-related risks within the scope of a scenario analysis: transitory climate risks are related to the transition to a low-carbon economy and result from changes in political parameters, technological developments and changing markets. To obtain a well-founded basis for its analyses, the Mercedes-Benz Group examines generally recognised scenarios such as the "Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario” (NZE) and the "Sustainable Development Scenario” (SDS) of the International Energy Agency (IEA). The scenarios are analysed, broken down and used as a reference for comparison with company-specific reduction paths, among other things.

Moreover, it is important for the Mercedes-Benz Group to know the long-term physical climate risks to its business operations. This refers to the impact of risks associated with the increasing intensity of extreme weather events as well as changes in climatic conditions – for example storms, floods, heavy precipitation and temperature rises. As a global company, the Mercedes-Benz Group has locations all over the world. In addition to assessing current threats from extreme weather events, long-term developments are also analysed and prioritised on the basis of different scenarios, including the IPCC SSP5-8.5 scenario.