We employ climate protection measures throughout the Group to reduce CO2 emissions, conserve resources and use energy more efficiently.
Digitization is changing our society. We are supporting this change, simplifying and enriching people's lives. However, increasing digitization requires a lot of energy, which is why we are committed to using energy more efficiently, reducing the energy consumption of our networks and sourcing our electricity group-wide completely from renewable energies since 2021.
We have set a Group-wide climate target to help us in these efforts: Until the end of 2025 we want to be climate-neutral regarding our own emissions (Scope 1&2). To this end, we are going to reduce our worldwide emissions by up to 95 percent. We will offset the remaining emissions from our carbon footprint. For this, we are concentrating on offsetting measures aimed at long-term removal of carbon from the atmosphere, such as afforestation. By 2040 at the latest, we want to be completely climate-neutral ("net zero") and leave no CO2 footprint across all three scopes. As an interim target on the way to becoming climate neutral, we have set ourselves the task of absolutely reducing CO2 emissions across Scopes 1-3 by 55 percent by 2030 compared to 2020. By the end of 2040, we intend to have cut our emissions by at least ninety percent absolutely, so that we only need to offset up to 10 percent. This target applies to the entire Group including T-Mobile US and raises again the ambition of our climate protection targets. The Science Based Targets initiative has confirmed that the climate targets for 2030 (near-term) and 2040 (long-term) uphold the Paris Climate Agreement and are approved as science-based net-zero targets according to its new, stricter guideline.
Major levers for achieving our climate protection target are, on the one hand, the efficient use of energy and the switch to new, energy-efficient technologies for network operation and data centers. The purchase of 100 percent electricity from renewable energies also ensures that no climate-damaging emissions are generated by the operation of our networks and data centers.
We are working to process data traffic from no more than a few, particularly efficient data centers. We also continue to optimize our current data centers through measures such as modernizing cooling systems and advancing the IT technology used there. Both of these are measures that can significantly reduce energy consumption.
We are also replacing legacy technology in our networks with new technology, i.e., by switching to IP technology in our fixed-line network.
Other measures that we take to reduce energy consumption and, as a result, CO2 emissions, include more efficient management of our properties as well as making our company fleet climate friendly.
We are particularly interested in helping our customers conserve resources and reduce their energy consumption through solutions such as our growing offer of sustainable products and services. These solutions help millions of Deutsche Telekom customers cut back on tons of CO2 every year. An example - cloud computing: By using software and IT infrastructure directly in the TelekomCloud, our highly efficient data centers consume up to 80 percent less energy compared to what happens when customers use their own infrastructure.