LAS VEGAS—Caesars Entertainment Corporation announced it has set science-based targets to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the company and throughout its supply chain. The company says that the goals are part of its ongoing commitment to fighting climate change and mitigating long-term risk.
Caesars is one of over 400 global organizations that has committed to business leadership and policy alignment on climate through the Science Based Target initiative (SBTi), and one of just over 100 companies to have their targets approved.
The SBTi is a collaboration among CDP (formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project), the United Nations Global Compact, World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Targets adopted by companies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are considered “science-based” if they are in line with the level of decarbonization required to keep global temperature increase below 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial temperatures.
Caesars Entertainment has committed to reducing absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions 30 percent by 2025, and 95 percent by 2050 from a 2011 base-year. In addition, the company has committed to having 60 percent of suppliers by spend institute science-based GHG reduction targets for their operations by 2023.
“Caesars Entertainment has a well-established track record of successful environmental sustainability progress, and establishing science-based targets further demonstrates our commitment to reducing our impact on the planet,” says Mark Frissora, president and CEO of Caesars Entertainment. “We are proud to be part of this global effort.”
Caesars is the first gaming company to include a scope 3 goal in its verified science-based targets, which includes the operations a company doesn’t directly control such as supply chain, vendors, etc. Caesars has thousands of suppliers throughout the company.
“We congratulate Caesars for setting a bold science-based target aligned with climate science and the Paris Agreement. It is particularly encouraging to see the company extending its influence to its suppliers, leveraging its purchasing power to spread science-based target setting throughout the supply chain,” says Cynthia Cummis, director of private sector climate mitigation at World Resources Institute, one of the Science Based Targets initiative partners. “We applaud this leadership, which contributes to our goal of mainstreaming science-based target setting as standard business practice.”
One of the first demonstrations of how Caesars will achieve its aggressive goals is a request for proposal (RFP) that will be issued in June for a major utility-scale purchase of solar energy in the Las Vegas desert, which will deliver power to its Nevada properties.
The carbon and management strategy developed by Caesars is a cornerstone of the company’s CodeGreen environmental program, which was established in 2008 and entails engaging employees and guests to understand and reduce energy use, GHG emissions, waste, and water use. Caesars Entertainment has reduced its total GHG emissions by 22.9 percent since 2011.
Additional progress includes reducing water use by 21 percent per square foot since 2008 and diverting 41 percent of waste from landfills in 2017.
