On January 14, NYK president Hitoshi Nagasawa gave a speech at the CDP 2020 A-List Company Awards.

The awards ceremony was held for Japanese companies that had been selected as A-list winners in the categories of “Climate Change,” “Water Security,” and “Forests” by CDP,* an international environmental non-profit organization.

Of the approximately 5,800 companies worldwide that were evaluated, 270 companies were selected for the Climate Change A-List, including 53 Japanese companies and two shipping companies. NYK was recognized for the following efforts:

Mr. Nagasawa expressed his gratitude for being selected for the Climate Change A-List, explained about the NYK Group’s ESG management, and expressed his determination to revolutionize the awareness of the entire group by thoroughly using economic factors and ESG as measures for assessing all actions.

Below is an excerpt from his translated address.

It is a great honor to be selected for the “A-List,” and I share this joy with all staff in the Group.

In our medium-term management plan “Staying Ahead 2022 with Digitalization & Green,” we have positioned the environment as one of our key issues and have been discussing how to achieve our medium- to long-term GHG emission reduction targets. We believe that this certification will give us a great deal of confidence and support for our future development.

Companies that do not sincerely address the global issues of ESG will disappear in the future. In particular, I believe that companies engaged in international logistics such as ours should take the lead in decarbonizing the entire supply chain in order to respond to climate change. To become a company that can respond to the demands of the times and society, we will revolutionize the awareness of our entire group.

Specifically, as I will discuss in the “NYK Group ESG Story” to be released in February, I would like to ensure that all employees use ESG, in addition to economic factors, as a measure for assessing all actions.

Aiming to be a company that is needed by society, we will continue to work together with all our stakeholders to realize a decarbonized society.

NYK continues to fuse the Group’s growth strategy with ESG, disclose relevant information as a leading company in the world, and contribute to the sustainable development of society through its business activities.

* CDP
CDP is a global non-profit that drives companies and governments to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, safeguard water resources, and protect forests. Voted the No. 1 climate research provider by investors and working with institutional investors with assets of US$106 trillion, the organization leverages investor and buyer power to motivate companies to disclose and manage their environmental impacts. Over 9,600 companies with over 50% of global market capitalization disclosed environmental data through CDP in 2020. This is in addition to the hundreds of cities, states, and regions that have disclosed, making CDP’s platform one of the richest sources of information globally on how companies and governments are driving environmental change. CDP is a founding member of the We Mean Business Coalition.

The full list of companies that made this year’s CDP A List is available here, along with other publicly available company scores:
https://www.cdp.net/en/companies/companies-scores

** Medium-to-long-term environmental targets
NYK’s reduction targets for GHG emissions are 30% per ton-kilometer by 2030 compared with a 2015 base year, and 50% per ton-kilometer by 2050 compared with the same base year. The NYK Group will make its best efforts to reduce GHG emissions by increasing the efficiency of fleet allocation, vessel operation, and cargo handling; striving to achieve zero downtime; and realizing visualization and optimization through hardware innovation and digitalization.

*** SBT Initiative
A collaboration among the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), the World Resources Institute (WRI), the World Wild Fund for Nature (WWF), and the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) to encourage adherence to science-based emission-reduction targets that are in line with the level of decarbonization to keep global temperature increase below 2 degrees Celsius compared to preindustrial levels. Over 500 companies around the world have had their targets verified, and NYK was the 20th Japanese company to have done so.