ARAUCO announces carbon neutrality by 2020 and becomes the world’s first forestry company to achieve this goal

ARAUCO made important announcements during the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit held in New York, strengthening the company’s leadership in environmental matters and measures to deal with the climate crisis.

ARAUCO announced its commitment to achieve carbon neutrality by 2020, meaning the company aims to capture more greenhouse gas emissions than its emissions at a global level, which in addition to being a significant contribution and real step forward to deal with the climate crisis, position ARAUCO as the world’s first forestry company to achieve this important goal.

Charles Kimber, ARAUCO’s Senior Vice President for Commercial and Corporate Affairs said “we’re very proud of this announcement, it is the fruit of the work we’ve been conducting for decades to permanently improve our environmental performance in different business areas and production processes in Chile and the world”.

In addition to this important milestone, the company announced it will join the SCIENCE BASED TARGETS, a global initiative that aims for companies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions based on climate science, to limit the planet’s increase in temperature.

“The magnitude of the emergency we’re experiencing on our planet demands that we push for an even more ambitious agenda. Therefore, in addition to our commitment to carbon neutrality, ARAUCO has decided to join the Science Based Targets. To do so, we have outlined an ambitious objective: to reduce our emissions at an annual rate of 2.5%, which means we have to continue to drive improvements to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of our operations”, said Kimber.

Even though these goals have been set for next year, reaching them has been long-term work for the company, with clear and meaningful objectives. In this sense, Kimber adds, “there are two complementary ways to reduce the planet’s rising temperature and at ARAUCO we’ve been working on both for a long time: driving improvements that have allowed us to reduce our operation’s greenhouse gas emissions, and at the same time increasing the capture of CO2 using our plantations and native forest”.

During the 90’s the company began to conduct pioneering work in emissions reduction: by incorporating clean and renewable biomass-based energy, thus contributing to the necessary decarbonization of the country’s energy matrix.

“This has allowed for 92% of the company’s energy matrix in Chile today to be comprised of clean and renewable energy. Now we want to go even further with Vientos Sur, our windfarm energy project that will have an installed capacity of more than 215 MW”.