Cargill Ahead of Targets on Energy, GHGs, Water

Cargill's energy efficiency improved by 3.7 percent over its 2010 baseline during fiscal year 2011, according to a company statement.

During the year ending May 31, 2011, the diversified agriculture, food and shipping company also improved its GHG intensity by 3.8 percent and its freshwater efficiency by 3.1 percent, both over its 2010 baseline.

That puts the company well on the way to meeting its 2015 environmental goals, which are to improve energy efficiency, GHG intensity and freshwater efficiency by five percent.

Renewables in FY2011 accounted for 11 percent of the company's energy portfolio, maintaining its position from the year before. Cargill is aiming for 12.5 percent by 2015.

The company issued its last CSR report in October 2010, although its most recent corporate report also discussed food security issues.

This year Cargill also reported its emissions data to the Carbon Disclosure Project for the first time. That data is available here (pdf).

The FY2010 CSR report said the company improved its energy efficiency by 11 percent, from its fiscal 2001 baseline, but was short of its 20 percent goal for that year, and while it improved GHG intensity by 1.5 percent from its baseline, it missed its 8 percent goal.

In FY2011 Cargill’s environmental initiatives included:

• A Behavior Based Energy Management (BBEM) system – a tool which engages employees in recognizing and eliminating energy inefficiencies – used at nearly 200 facilities
• Project Crowbar, which invests seed funds to identify and deploy energy efficiency technologies that can be replicated rapidly across many operating plants and manufacturing technologies; and
• Combined heat-and-power units at two Cargill facilities in Brazil.

Cargill recently announced a $36 million waste-to-energy project, expected to produce 1.4 MW for its High River, Alberta, beef processing facility.

The company employs 138,000 people in 63 countries.