Today is our longest stage and we are entering a new EU country: France. There are plenty of exciting things for us to do there! We will be meeting journalists, hopefully lots of nice French folk and we have a rendezvous with the European Parliament, where recent discussions have often centred on the EU climate targets, the challenges of electromobility and other exciting futuristic topics. And it goes without saying that we’ll need to sample an Alsatian tarte flambée. We’ll pass on the snails and frogs’ legs though. When we left the depot this morning, you could have thought we were participants in the Tour de France - with a cry of “Allez, allez” we were off.
The EU climate goals are not just a matter for the European Parliament, they have of course long been a concern for MAN’s employees too. By 2030, total emissions from the fleet of trucks, buses and vans sold by MAN are set to fall by 28%. Sustainability is a key aspect of the MAN corporate strategy. This is why in 2021 MAN joined the SBTi, a partnership between the CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project), the United Nations Global Compact, the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). The group wants to face up to its responsibility to limit climate change. By becoming part of the initiative, companies undertake to define binding and science-based goals to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that harm the climate. Global warming should ideally be limited to 2° Celsius, or preferably 1.5° Celsius above pre-industrial levels.