Saint Gobain - Registration document 2016

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2 ONE AMBITION: TO IMPROVE THE WELL-BEING OF ALL
2. Creating great living places
30 SAINT-GOBAIN - REGISTRATION DOCUMENT 2016
Promoting sustainable construction 2.2.1
Collaboration with Green Building Councils a)
(GBC)
Saint-Gobain is convinced that the transition to sustainable
built environment involves the application of new partnership
and co-development relationships. Contributions to this
transition should come from all sustainable construction
businesses and centers of expertise.
professionals and players. The GBC network offers a fast path
for deployment of sustainable construction technologies and
dissemination of good practices, particularly via education for
market players. For Saint-Gobain, market transformation
means changing the whole of the construction market value
chain, and the GBCs are instrumental in this. They can create
a collective momentum involving the various stakeholders
(investors, builders, manufacturers, architects, etc.).
This desire to move the construction market towards more
sustainable building is widely shared with the GBCs, a global
network of national associations of construction market
member of 37 local GBCs worldwide and of the European
network of GBCs (ERN), and sits on the Corporate Advisory
Board of the World Green Building Council (WGBC). In 2016,
Saint-Gobain provided active support for a number of WGBC
campaigns, including:
can make an active contribution to their work. The Group is a
The geographical approach of the GBCs means that every
one of Saint-Gobain’s national, regional and international units
Better Places for People, which promotes quantification ‹
and understanding of the positive impacts of sustainable
buildings on health and well-being;
Europe’s existing building stock.
BuildUpon, a project to support strategies for renovating ‹
topics to do with sustainable construction, with Pierre André
de Chalendar being awarded the World GBC’s David
Gottfried prize. This award, created in 2011, rewards
personalities who have made a unique, innovative and
entrepreneurial contribution to the global cause of
sustainable building development.
The Group won recognition in 2016 for its commitment to
Promotion of building energy efficiency b)
greenhouse gas emissions (35%), European building stock has
to occupy a central position in European energy and climate
policies. An ambitious political framework can remove
technical as well as financial obstacles to the move to an
efficient, comfortable and low-energy built environment.
energy efficiency lies in speeding up the roll-out of existing
solutions in new buildings, and especially in existing buildings.
Given their weight in energy consumption (40%) and
In Europe and other developed countries, the challenge of
varied interventions a building experiences during its lifetime.
solutions in buildings, specifically by improving their
performance and simplifying their installation. The Group is
also committed to training professionals to ensure that
energy renovation is better integrated into the multiple and
Saint-Gobain is committed to promoting energy efficiency
renovation work (for example, during alterations or
renovations of roofs or façades). Backing for renovation
works must be a priority, to optimize the complementary use
of the available, accessible technical solutions, both passive
(insulation and insulation glazing) and active.
With this in mind, Saint-Gobain promotes in-depth energy
renovation, in stages, and implementation of a renovation
process based on a “renovation passport”, identifying the
tasks to be completed and scheduling them over time, and
optimizing them by incorporating energy efficiency into the
Away from Europe, the Group also lends support to energy
efficiency and its place in national policies. In emerging
countries, the potential for energy efficiency is concentrated
in new buildings. Saint-Gobain directs its efforts to
highlighting for stakeholders the benefits of energy efficiency,
and the effective implementation of ambitious regulations.
The Group’s positive contribution to 2.2.2
climate challenges
the existing building stock is critical to controlling the
long-term effects of climate change.
The Group seeks to minimize its negative impacts and to
continue to increase its positive contribution, aware that its
activities inevitably have environmental, social and economic
impacts. Controlling greenhouse gas emissions and global
energy consumption are indispensable conditions for keeping
global warming to below 2°C. Increasing the energy efficiency
of buildings through new building and thermal renovation of
production and logistics operations. The benefits provided by
the Group’s thermal insulation and insulation glazing, in terms
of energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions,
significantly exceed their production-related emissions(1).
The innovative solutions developed by the Group to improve
building energy efficiency help to reduce both the negative
impacts of construction on the climate, and users’ energy
bills. They have an important role to play in combating
climate change, therefore: by reducing energy needs, they
decrease greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time,
Saint-Gobain has implemented an energy policy and
ambitious goals for reducing the environmental impact of its
To shine a spotlight on this contribution, in 2015, in
partnership with the accounting firm EY, Saint-Gobain
developed a methodology to estimate greenhouse gas
emissions saved by using its insulation solutions(2) in Europe(3).
The term "production-related emissions" refers to emissions related to the entire life cycle (from the extraction of raw materials to the end of life, (1)
including manufacturing, transport and use).
Thermal insulation (glass wool, stone wool, PSE) and insulated glazing (double and triple layered glazing). (2)
European Union of 28, Norway, Switzerland. (3)