Climate protection solutions for our cus­tomers

For corporate cus­tomers, which also includes cities and municipalities, we offer the following product groups for reducing CO₂ emissions.

• Work Smart: solutions for video conferencing and working from home
• Thanks to our services, cus­tomers can eliminate some of their travel by exchanging images, audio and data remotely. Savings in this area have fallen again, following an increase during the COVID-19 pandemic, due to an increase in commuting and travel.
• IoT solutions
• The Internet of Things (IoT) enables data-based control of devices, buildings and vehicles in real time, making systems more efficient and better at conserving resources. We organise competitions such as the IoT Climate Award or the ‘StartUp Challenge’ to find and promote IoT com­pa­nies with climate-friendly services.

• Virtualisation and centralisation of data centres
• Our cloud and housing services enable our cus­tomers to give up their own data centres and servers and outsource them to highly efficient data centres with a considerable level of server virtualisation.
• Extending the service life of electronic devices
• We refurbish used but still functional mobile phones, laptops, tablets, routers and TV-Boxes so that they can be used again, thereby extending their service life. In the case of mobile phones, these are reused as low-cost devices in Switzer­land or in emerging countries.

• Paper savings
• Paper is saved through electronic invoicing, the electronic processing of transactions through the platform Conextrade and e-signatures as an alternative to wet signatures. Over the last few years, the percentage of paperless invoices has increased to over 72%. This rate of digitalisation means that more than two million cus­tomers receive their monthly bills exclusively in digital form.
• In 2023, we reassessed the impact of rebound effects in the area of e-commerce with the increased return of goods and the cor­re­spond­ing increase in freight transport. We also reassessed the situation regarding the replacement of data carriers by internet use, as many data carriers such as CDs, DVDs and records hardly exist any more. This has prompted us to no longer count the two categories of e-commerce and replacement of data carriers by internet use as avoided emissions.
• Data-based sustainability
• In the year under review, we worked with the climate consultancy company Swiss Climate and the software company Sweep to provide com­pre­hen­sive and smart software solutions for achieving net-zero emissions. These enable the automated collection of emissions from a variety of data sources, facilitate the processing of measurement results for data-based decisions and the tracking of the reduction mea­sures taken over several decades. In recent years, we have examined around 40 ap­pli­ca­tions for CO² and ESG management and in the year under review supported around 15 com­pa­nies in the evaluation and im­ple­men­ta­tion of suitable tools.

• In the year under review, around 10,000 employees, cus­tomers and members of the com­pa­nies Migros, Mobiliar, Swiss Post, SBB, Swisscom, VCS and EnergieSchweiz took part in the joint Swiss Climate Challenge. By changing their mobility habits, they have saved a total of around 266 tonnes of CO₂.

• Mobility analyses are also part of the data-based sustainability offering. Com­pa­nies, cities, municipalities and events optimise their transport planning on the basis of anonymised mobility data.

• In­vest­ments in start-ups with a focus on sustainability
• Through our Swisscom Ventures unit, we also makes targeted in­vest­ments in start-ups whose products help solve urgent sustainability problems, in particular the climate crisis. However, the start-ups that Swisscom has previously invested in also support other sustainability goals (SDGs), in particular biodiversity.

• Thus far, we have invested in a total of eight start-ups with a focus on sustainability. Viboo and Pexapark were added to the list in the year under review. We utilise these com­pa­nies’ solutions ourselves wherever possible and promote them to our cus­tomers.
• Swisscom also launched the DeepTech Nation Foundation in the year under review, with the aim of expanding in­vest­ments in Swiss-based start-ups together with its partners.

With the climate protection solutions mentioned above, we and our business cus­tomers avoided a total of 1,158,341 tonnes of CO₂eq. in the reporting year. This quantity decreased by 356,513 tonnes compared to the previous year. The main reasons behind this decline include a reduction in working from home, an increase in business travel and the fact that the e-commerce and ‘dematerialisation’ categories are no longer included.

Overview of our climate protection solutions, their scope and the CO₂ emissions avoided as a result (specified in kilotonnes of CO₂eq)