KaKao

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  Ⅰ. Environmental Management System

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We set forth our environmental policy to minimize environmental impact of our business operations and established governance to implement environmental management.

Key environmental issues are regularly discussed at the Board of Directors and the ESG Committee. We systematically execute the environmental goals that we set and make eco-conscious investments to help resolve environmental issues.

 

 

Environmental Management Implementation System

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▶ Environmental Policy

 

Kakao stipulated our environmental policy in 2021 to guide our implementation of environmental management. This policy drives us to minimize environmental impact from our service delivery and fulfill our responsibility for environmental pollution prevention and environmental protection. In 2022, this policy was updated with the addition of provisions concerning enterprise-wide environmental management governance. In line with the policy, the Board, as the highest decision-making body, makes decisions and performs oversight on our environmental performance and risk, and the ESG Working Group under the Committee integrates the decisions made into our overall operations and manages environmental performance.

 

🔗 Kakao’s Environmental Policy

      

     

 

 

▶ Dedicated Environmental Management Organization

 

Climate change, waste, and other environmental issues are reported to the Board as the highest decision-making body, which in turn reviews and approves our ESG plans and implementation outcomes. The ESG Committee provides the foundation for our enterprise-wide environmental management to regularly engage in the management, oversight, deliberation and decision-making of overall ESG plans and their implementation including environmental management.

In 2022, we created an environmental management taskforce as a dedicated environmental management organization at the Community level. This taskforce is responsible for setting our net zero strategy, monitoring and reporting the progress made against environmental goals, communicating with stakeholders, and responding to global initiatives while coordinating Community-wide environmental responses. Each Community member also has their dedicated environmental organizations to propose and implement environmental improvement tasks and strategies at the member level, and advance environmental management concerning environmental data management, environmental disclosure, ISO certification, and GHG emissions verification.

 

 

▶ Environmental Management System

 

To efficiently manage environment-related risk based on our environmental management system, we systematically identify, evaluate, manage and improve our organization in terms of environmental aspects. In April 2021, our Jeju Headquarters and Pangyo Agit achieved the ISO 14001 environmental management system certification, and have since received annual surveillance audits by independent third-party organizations.

Internal audits were made on our environmental management system in December 2022, and we maintained our certification through the regular ISO 14001 audits performed in March 2023.

 

 

▶ Environmental Investment

 

Our Pangyo Agit, which accommodated Community members in 2022, achieved LEED (Leadership in Energy and Design) Gold under this green building certification system in March 2023. We signed an MOU with 60hz, an energy IT social venture company, to purchase renewable energy directly produced by community cooperatives. In so doing, Our Jeju Office met all its power needs with photovoltaic energy for the year of 2022.

 

▶ Environmental Goal

 

Kakao sets goals and takes action in line with detailed plans to reduce environmental impact from our business operations and bring positive environmental impact with the services that we provide. We set our 2040 Net Zero goal to reduce Scope 1&2 GHG emissions to zero by 2040, and will gradually expand our GHG emissions management to the entire value chain. In 2022, we set a goal of fully shifting to renewable energy first for our Jeju Headquarters in our efforts to source renewable energy for office operations and reduce GHG emissions. To meet this goal, we purchased renewable energy certificates valued at 1,900MWh and fully switched to renewable energy for power consumption at our Jeju Office in 2022. This resulted in a 92% reduction in GHG emissions intensity at the office, from 0.26 tCO2e/person in 2021 to 0.02 tCO2e/person in 2022. Meanwhile, GHG emissions intensity for our Pangyo Office inched up from 0.66 tCO2e/person in 2021 to 1.92 tCO2e/person  in 2022, which is attributable to Community members moving into our Pangyo Agit and power consumed for electrical load testing at the new office building. We will continue to manage building energy efficiency and  embrace renewable energy to reduce emissions intensity both from our new and existing office operations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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  Ⅱ. Climate Change Adaptation

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We deeply concur on the severity of climate change and established our mid/long-term climate change adaptation goal to join in the global efforts to address climate change. With an overarching goal of achieving Net Zero emissions by 2040, we are working on multiple fronts to transition to EVs, increase the use of renewable energy, and manage supply chain carbon emissions to mitigate carbon emissions along the entire value chain as well as from our own operations.

 

 

2040 Net Zero Roadmap

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▶ Net Zero Goal

 

We committed to our Net Zero goal to reduce our consolidated GHG emissions to zero by 2040, and joined the SBTi(Science Based Targets initiative) as the first Korean internet business to do so. We defined our SBTi-based goal to reduce our Scope 1&2 emissions by 40% in 2030 and by 100% in 2040 from the 2021 base year. As to Scope 3 emissions, we set a mid-term goal of achieving a 17% reduction by 2030 from 2021. We also joined the RE100, a global renewable energy initiative, in the first half of 2023 to fully switch to eco-friendly energy for 60% of our consolidated power consumption by 2030 and for 100% by 2040 to gradually lower our carbon emissions from power consumption.

 

[Scope 1] Transition to EVs

Scope 1 emissions directly generated from our business operations mostly stem from the use of vehicle fuel. We aim to reduce such emissions by switching to EVs for our commuter buses and corporate fleet vehicles.

 

[Scope 2] Increase the use of renewable energy

We set a goal of reducing our indirect Scope 2 emissions generated from operational power consumption. We will shift to eco-friendly energy for 60% of our power consumption by 2030 and embrace renewable energy for all our power consumption by 2040. We took the first step to this end by fully transitioning to renewable energy for our Jeju Office in 2022, and plan to gradually expand our sourcing of renewable energy. We sourced 1,900MWh of renewable energy in 2022, and this will rise to 4,000MWh in 2023.

 

[Scope 3] Manage supply chain carbon emissions

To identify GHG emissions indirectly generated along the value chain, we calculated our Scope 3 emissions across all 15 categories in 2022, and disclosed our emissions in 13 relevant categories. The data will base our efforts to establish and advance our Scope 3 emissions management system.

 

 

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  Ⅲ. Active Green Initiative

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Our the Active Green Initiative applies the Kakao’s Style to advancing environmental initiatives. This will help us abide by environmental regulations as part of our corporate social responsibility. We will transparently communicate to our stakeholders how we adapt to climate change and reduce our environmental footprint. Leveraging the strengths of our platforms, we will ensure our users join us on our journey to transition to a low-carbon society using our services.

 

 

 

Active Green Initiative

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We stipulated our company-wide principles to resolve environmental challenges and respond to the climate crisis, and announced our Active Green Initiative which embodies our commitment to fulfilling our role in this regard. The Active Green Initiative focuses on the Kakao’s Style of contributing to the environment. This moves beyond merely reducing our carbon emissions to contributing to social sustainability with the wide spectrum of service offerings that we provide to the general public. Specifically, the Initiative aims to advance climate change adaptation with the Net Zero goal of reducing our GHG emissions to zero by 2040. Driven by the principles of ‘Within Kakao’, ‘Through Kakao’ and ‘With Kakao’, we ensure that our Krew, partners, users, and members of society all do their part in tackling environmental challenges

 

As part of our Active Green Initiative, we aggregate the eco-friendly impacts Kakao services and platform users made and disclose it as a numerical value we call the Kakao Carbon Index. Through the Kakao Carbon Index, we support our users' positive response to climate change and their participation in eco-friendly activities, and will strive to help make the transition to a low-carbon society.

 

🌳 Kakao Active Green & Kakao Carbon Index Beta

     https://www.kakaocorp.com/page/responsible/activegreen?lang=KOR&tab=all