Saint Gobain - Registration document 2016

2 ONE AMBITION: TO IMPROVE THE WELL-BEING OF ALL 1. The Group and its environment

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THE CHALLENGE OF CLIMATE CHANGE

assessed; the Stern (1) report, which provides a benchmark, showed that the cost of doing nothing outweighs the cost of a coordinated plan to reduce climate change. Twenty-five years after the first report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the extent of the problem of global warming has now been fully After more than 20 years of negotiations and as a matter of urgency, governments have therefore decided to commit to quantified targets for greenhouse gas reduction. The Paris Agreement, which came into force on November 4, 2015, was ratified by China and the United States, the world’s biggest levels. To achieve this target, there is an immediate need to reduce emissions growth by one-third between 2010 and 2030, compared with the previous two decades (2) . greenhouse gas emitters. It sets the stringent goal of keeping the increase in temperature to below 2°C above pre-industrial In the private sector, there are a number of levers for action to reduce our environmental footprint: in Europe, the building sector alone accounts for 40% of final energy consumption and 35% of greenhouse gas emissions (3) . Globally, building

buildings could reduce this increase to just 10% (4) of current energy consumption. Building energy efficiency therefore presents many opportunities to address global warming, although public opinion must continue to be made aware of this. Today, though, the primary trigger for renovation work is to increase the comfort of the home. Under these conditions, combining residential comfort and energy efficiency is a major lever for action to combat climate change. practices in the design, construction and operation of energy consumption could double or even triple by 2050 (4) if nothing is done. However, the full use of current best environmental impact of the building as a whole, from the extraction of raw materials to demolition and recycling. The reuse of materials generates additional economic growth and limits resource usage and emissions. By expanding this kind of approach, greater economic affluence can be decoupled from the use of resources. Furthermore, with increasing frequency, public policies are adopting a life cycle approach, which considers the

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Economic output Resource use No decoupling RESOURCE USE GROWS AT LEAST AS RAPIDLY AS ECONOMIC OUTPUT.

Absolute decoupling RESOURCE USE DECLINES WHILE ECONOMIC OUTPUT GROWS.

Relative decoupling RESOURCE USE GROWS LESS RAPIDLY THAN ECONOMIC OUTPUT.

Time

Source: European Environment Agency (5)

Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, 2006. (1) Synthesis report on the aggregate effect of the intended nationally determined contributions, UNFCC, October 2015. (2) Energy Union Package: A Framework Strategy for a Resilient Energy Union with a Forward-Looking Climate Change Policy, European Commission (3) Communication, 2015. Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change, contribution from Working Group III of the Fifth IPCC Assessment Report (AR5), 2014. (4) The European Environment: State and outlook 2015 – Synthesis report, European Environment Agency. (5)

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SAINT-GOBAIN - REGISTRATION DOCUMENT 2016