SAP’s purpose is to help the world run better and improve people's lives with sustainability at the core. Our objective is to create a positive economic, environmental, and social impact worldwide within planetary boundaries. We bring this to life by providing products and services that meet the sustainability challenges and opportunities of our customers (enabler) and leading by example in our own sustainable business operations and practices (exemplar). Learn about our approach to sustainability.

SAP Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises is a flexible solution bundle of sustainability-focused applications to help companies achieve holistic sustainability management. Companies can now integrate sustainability metrics seamlessly into their end-to-end business processes. We realise each company is at a different stage of implementing sustainable performance, so SAP Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises provides maximum flexibility for customers to choose which solutions and capabilities they want to incorporate into their sustainability management portfolio at the time that is right for them. The solutions can be broadly adopted for holistic management, or selectively implemented to operationalise specific areas of sustainability performance. The customisable suite is easy for companies to adopt with a single license, and SAP expert implementation support and our highly skilled partner ecosystem.

SAP’s products and services help deliver environmental and social impact on four dimensions including climate action, circular economy, social responsibility, and holistic steering and reporting.

Holistic sustainability management: SAP’s sustainability and ESG reporting solutions contribute to a future where decisions in our global economy are made based on their sustainability impact. Example: SAP Sustainability Control Tower helps organisations connect their environmental, social, and financial data holistically so they can steer their business towards sustainability.

Climate action: SAP’s climate change solutions contribute to a future with zero emissions. Example: SAP Product Footprint Management enables organisations to assess and reduce greenhouse gas emissions of their products and operations along their entire value chain.

Circular economy: SAP’s circular economy solutions contribute to a future with zero waste. Example: SAP Responsible Design and Production enables organisations to make circularity a key principle of product design and production. It helps them re-use materials, protect resources, eliminate waste, and build regenerative businesses.

Social responsibility: SAP’s social responsibility solutions contribute to a future with zero inequality. Example: SAP Business Network and our SAP SuccessFactors HCM provide the visibility needed to support organisations in integrating ethical and socially responsible sustainable business practices to ensure diversity, equity, and inclusion across the entire value chain.

SAP addresses sustainability, including climate action, as one of our key focus areas through a dual approach. As an enabler, we aim to provide products and services to our customers to reduce their carbon emissions and pave the way toward a low-carbon future together. As an exemplar, to live up to our responsibility and build climate resilience, we strive to lead by example by running our own business operations and practices more sustainably.

To get insights into how SAP addresses climate change with our three-fold approach “avoid-reduce-compensate,” please see the SAP Integrated Report. SAP’s environmental efforts and targets are also outlined in the Global Environmental Policy.

For an overview of how SAP embeds sustainability in our solution portfolio, please visit our Web site.

Since 2018, SAP reports in alignment with the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) recommendations. The topic of climate change-related risks is addressed in the chapter "Energy and Emissions" of our Integrated Report.

More than a decade ago, SAP set out on its sustainability journey with the objective to create positive economic, environmental, and social impact within planetary boundaries. Along the way, we have continuously added and raised financial as well as pre-financial targets and established ourselves as a front-runner in integrating economic, social, and environmental performance into how we measure and steer our business success holistically.

In January 2022, we committed to achieve net zero across our value chain by 2030 – 20 years earlier than originally planned. This moves forward our commitment by 20 years.

On our pathway towards net zero, the next intermediate milestone is 2023, when SAP aims to be carbon neutral in its own operations – two years earlier than originally targeted. This includes all direct (Scope 1), indirect (Scope 2), and selected categories of value chain (Scope 3) carbon emissions, such as business flights, employee commuting, and external data centres (co-locations and hyperscalers). The potential for decarbonization can however be amplified considerably if we enhance our efforts along the entire value chain. In 2022, gross carbon emissions amounted to 10,688 kilotons (kt) along SAP’s entire value chain (including upstream and downstream emissions), compared to 441 kt gross emissions for SAP’s own operations (see Integrated Report 2023).

SAP is committed to protecting the environment and continuously improving our own environmental performance. Therefore, we are gradually introducing an EMS reflecting the ISO 14001 standard at SAP sites worldwide. We aim to increase the EMS scope to 100% of SAP’s major company-owned sites by 2025 (2022: 85%). In addition, an ISO 50001-certified energy management system is integrated with existing management systems at selected sites, such as SAP’s headquarters. View our ISO certificates on sap.com (go to “Energy and environmental management”).

SAP aspires to a world of zero waste and is eager to move to an interconnected, circular economy through ambitious enabler and exemplar activities. As an example, in July 2019, SAP launched the initiative Beyond Single-Use Plastics to phase out single-use plastics in our own operations, a project which concluded in June 2021. In 2020, at the World Economic Forum, SAP joined the Global Plastic Action Partnership to create a cleaner ocean by 2030 and became part of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation to pave the way to a circular economy.

We also manage our electrical and electronic waste (e-waste) responsibly by cooperating with international and local IT asset lifecycle partners that help us to refurbish, recycle, and sustainably dispose our discarded devices. Further details can be found on our Circular Economy Web site and our Integrated Report.

SAP also aims at helping its clients fighting against plastic pollution and becoming more circular. More about SAP solutions for Circular Economy can be found on sap.com

Since 2012, we annually release an Integrated Report which combines our full-year financial, social, and environmental performance, allowing us to present a clear and holistic overview of what drives our company and our long-term success. The current SAP Integrated Report can be found at www.sapintegratedreport.com.

Connecting financial and non-financial ESG metrics is key to comprehensively analysing all dimensions of a company’s performance and working toward their integration and harmonisation. On this journey, digital technologies play a fundamental role in delivering embedded, validated, and real-time data. In addition to the perspective of connecting financial and non-financial ESG metrics, holistic steering and reporting integrates the dimensions of positive and negative impacts that businesses create along their complete value chain.

Building on our experience in connecting financial and non-financial measures, we co-founded the Value Balancing Alliance (VBA) in 2019 to support the development of a standardised impact measurement and valuation methodology that helps companies, investors, and other stakeholders understand, quantify and compare financial and non-financial performance. These insights enable companies to create business value beyond revenue or profit growth while taking into consideration the long-term impacts of business operations on the environment and society as a whole. Further details on SAP’s journey on holistic steering and reporting and the results of the third VBA methodology pilot phase can be found in our Integrated Report.

Yes, learn more about SAP’s Global Tax Principles here.

We have implemented safeguards to help protect the fundamental rights of everyone whose data is processed by SAP, whether they are our customers, prospects, employees, or partners. In addition, we work toward compliance with all relevant legal requirements for data protection. You can find more information in the chapter "Security, Data Protection and Privacy" of the SAP Integrated Report, on SAP Trust Center, in the SAP Privacy Statement.

As a signatory of the UN Global Compact since 2000, SAP believes companies have a responsibility to respect human rights throughout all business operations. SAP is committed to respecting and promoting human rights across our operations, extended supply chain, and product lifecycle. We set high standards of fairness, diversity, and inclusion for ourselves, and expect all of our business partners to respect human rights and avoid complicity in any abuse. We take guidance from the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights as well as legal requirements like the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act (Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz, LkSG), to operationalise our commitment.