Shining light on a greener, more transparent future

Stewarding sustainable manufacturing practices is central to our mission and how we operate. Now more than ever, driving sustainability means doing our part to help fight climate change. Sustainability is not only engrained in our values – it’s integral to our business strategy. Customers and investors expect meaningful progress and disclosure towards a greener future. Proudly, we drive transparency when reporting our progress in addressing environmental, social and governance (ESG) topics and support sustainability through our efforts to lower our carbon emissions and those of our partners.   

Continuously improving sustainability and transparency

In many ways, our progress speaks for itself: our scores with ESG analyst firms have trended consistently upward as we strive to implement more sustainability initiatives and improve our transparency. As shown in Table 1, we continue to be recognized for our sustainability efforts, including our performance in climate change, energy efficiency and water security. In 2019, CDP (formerly Carbon Disclosure Project) gave us an A- score, placing us in the top quartile of respondents. We have also received Gold-level recognition from EcoVadis. Our level of engagement with the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) is rated as ‘Advanced.’ Through these initiatives, we strive to reaffirm our commitment to sustainability and global partnership, and demonstrate to our customers, investors, and employees, that we’re in it for the long haul.  

These disclosures do more than track and report our progress; they tell the story of our sustainability past, present and future. Through our manufacturing and use of solar and lighting solutions, and through our carbon offsets, we have been able to reach our goals to reduce our CO₂ emissions by at least 10 percent, increase our solar module production, and decrease the cost of electricity to the grid against fossil fuels.

Sustainability is core to our mission of becoming the most trusted technology, supply chain and manufacturing partner.

– Kyra Whitten, VP Marketing, Communications and Sustainability, Flex

“As we determine our next set of sustainability targets, we remain committed to driving programs that help address broader societal and environmental issues, such as supply chain resiliency, climate change, diversity and inclusion as well as continuing to improve our governance and transparency.” 

Powering operations with solar energy

Through our work at Nextracker, we enable our partners and customers to utilize solar energy in their operations, sparing the air of fossil fuel-related greenhouse gases (GHGs). In 2019 alone, Nextracker manufactured enough solar photovoltaic modules and solar trackers to power 5.3 million homes, beating our goal of 3.5 million homes by over 50%! We are proud to have Nextracker as part of the Flex family, and we’re pleased to announce that in 2019, Nextracker earned the #1 market share leader position for the fifth consecutive year in the rankings by HS Markit and Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables. We believe solar energy can power a greener future, and we use Nextracker products in our own operations. In 2019, we implemented about 300 different projects for renewable energy generation across the globe. Our newest renewable project, a solar generation plant at our San Luis Rio Colorado facility, is a rooftop solar system that can generate up to 1.56MW of clean energy.  

Scope 3 CO₂e emissions offset with green energy sources

We recognize that as a global company of our size, we will still produce emissions despite our use of solar and energy efficient lighting. That’s why we use carbon offsets to help reduce our carbon footprint and impact on the environment. In 2019, through our energy management programs, we avoided more than 22,000 tonnes of Scope 1 and 2 emissions, which are emissions resulting from the energy used to run our business operations. To supplement these initiatives, we actively work to offset our Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions through Certified Emissions Reductions (CER) certificates. Since 2017, we’ve collaborated with the Clean Development Mechanism on projects in Brazil, China, Costa Rica and India to offset carbon emissions through the development of green sources of energy, including hydropower, biomass and waste-to-energy. These projects resulted in the offsetting of over 70,500 tonnes of Scope 3 CO₂e emissions in 2019 alone. 

Continuing our sustainability journey 

As a global company that deeply cares about building a more sustainable future, we’re proud of the progress we’ve made to reduce our carbon footprint and enable our customers to meet their energy efficiency and GHG reduction goals. We believe in being transparent about our progress and sharing it to inspire others and keep ourselves accountable. In 2020 and beyond, we look forward to continuing our sustainability journey and reporting progress along the way.

Learn more about our sustainability efforts in our 2020 sustainability report