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SAP expects to rid car fleet of fossil fuel engines by 2030 – but still more than happy to take money from oil industry
Promises to stop ordering combustion engine vehicles by 2025
SAP expects its fleet of 27,000 corporate cars to be free of tailpipe emissions by 2030 and will no longer allow the ordering of vehicles with combustion engines from 2025.
The latest green commitment comes by way of chief financial officer Luka Mucic, who is also the board sponsor for sustainability efforts.
In an interview, he said most of the current fleet of vehicles are in Germany. Electric vehicles make up about 20 per cent of the corp cars used by SAP employees.
He said the application biz plans to spend millions of euros creating charging stations near its offices and developing software to connect them to back-office systems. By 2030, he said he expects the whole fleet to be fully electric.
By pure coincidence, greening the economy is in the news this week with the eyes of the world on COP26, where world leaders gather in search for meaningful change to humankind's suicidal attachment to carbon-based fossil fuels, which are set to wreck Earth's climate if current rates of consumption continue.
Still, let no one say SAP does not do its bit.
Early last year, CEO Christian Klein, who along with Jennifer Morgan succeeded Bill McDermott as joint bosses of SAP, travelled the 430km journey from corporate HQ in Walldorf, Germany, to the World Economic Forum event in Davos, Switzerland, in a hydrogen-electric hybrid Mercedes GLC F-cell SUV. Morgan came by aeroplane, it was later revealed.
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- Intel sponsors report on tech's role in decarbonisation and the irony isn't lost on us
- Wind and quite a bit of fog shroud Boris Johnson's energy vision for the UK
Despite strong words and handwringing from world leaders, investment in fossil fuel marches on at a merry rate, the industry pocketing $3.8 trillion since the Paris climate deal in 2015, according to reports.
With cash like that swimming about, SAP is not about to miss an opportunity. Last year it announced a partnership with consulting and accountancy titan Accenture to develop solutions for upstream oil and gas companies based on the SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
SAP and Accenture are working with a consortium comprised of exploration and production companies including BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Equinor, and Shell. ®
Biting the hand that feeds IT
