Environmental Leader

By using cleaner energy and employee’s efforts to reduce energy consumption, Thales has achieved a ten percent reduction in fossil fuel consumption and a 3.8 percent decrease in energy-related CO2 emissions from buildings in 2008, according to the company’s 2008 Corporate Responsibility Annual Report (PDF). Thales also has decreased CO2 emissions from sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) by 17 percent in 2008 and by 40 percent since 2006.

Changes in employee behavior including the use of travel options with less carbon emissions also has helped reduce the company’s carbon footprint per employee by 2 percent in 2008. It has also led to a 4.5 percent decrease in energy consumption per employee and a 17 percent decrease in water consumption. The company also has recovered 68 percent of its non-hazardous waste in 2008.

Key goals of Thales’ environmental policy and action plans include reducing greenhouse gas emissions, reducing consumption of energy and natural resources, limiting waste output and promoting recycling and re-use, and managing atmospheric emissions and liquid effluent.

The global technology provider for the aerospace, space, defense, security and transportation markets has started to design more environmentally-friendly products and systems. As an example, the company has introduced a new motion system, eMk2, for flight simulators, which delivers an 80 percent savings in power consumption compared to existing full flight simulators.

Thales is also greening its IT departments. Two of the group’s six data centers have shown significant results, according to the report. In Elancourt, France, new generation inverters have decreased electricity consumption by 10 percent, and in-row cooling systems have cut energy spending by 15 to 30 percent. In addition, by replacing and optimizing the cooling systems, the data centers have decreased electricity consumption by an additional 10 percent.

In Doncaster, UK, the data center’s free-cooling system has cut the energy bill by 13 percent and the investment has paid for itself in less than two years. The optimization of IT resources and the virtualization of more than 2,000 servers have decreased the number of servers by 25 percent and their usage by 20 percent.

The technology company is also selecting more eco-friendly suppliers. In its request for proposals for office supplies, Thales now includes environmental factors such as eco-friendly products with less packaging, which has resulted in a penetration rate of 30 percent for green office supplies.

Thales is a founding member of the Clean Sky initiative by industry and the European Commission to reduce the air transport sector’s environmental impact, targeting a 60 percent reduction in NOx, 40 percent cut in CO2 and a 50 percent reduction in noise.