Samsung's new climate strategy welcomed but falls short of its responsibility

By Jang Daul

Samsung Electronics announced a new climate and environment strategy on Sept. 15. The world's biggest memory chip maker pledged to achieve company-wide net zero carbon emissions by 2050 to help tackle the global climate crisis.

The world's most electricity-consuming information and communication technologies (ICT)-manufacturing company also promised to use and purchase 100 percent renewable electricity globally by 2050.

However, the level of ambition in the new strategy falls simply far short of Samsung's required responsibility as well as its expected leadership.

First of all, the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of Samsung have not been decreasing but increasing. Its total global GHGs emissions in 2015 were 10 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent and the amount increased up to 17.4 million ton in 2021, a 40 percent increase in six years.

Its climate mitigation performance within South Korea is even worse. The GHG emissions of Samsung, the third-largest private emitter in the country, more than double from 6.7 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2015 to 14.5 million tons in 2021, a 116 percent increase.

Samsung, in its announcement, boasted that it started its eco-friendly management back in 1992, adopted an environment-first approach as one of its core management principles in 2005 and also have been promoting green management to reduce GHG emissions since 2009.

However, the inconvenient truth of the continued increase in Samsung's GHG emissions shows how empty all the words are. Regardless of how much effort Samsung puts into developing 'greener' chips by its cutting-edge technology, if its emissions, after all, never stop increasing, Samsung is clearly failing in its obligation.

Therefore, without an ambitious and fast enough plan to firstly shift its GHG emissions from an increasing to decreasing trend followed by achieving net zero much earlier than 2050, it would be very difficult for Samsung to avoid being labeled as a "greenwashing champion."

Samsung's competitors as well as major global corporations have achieved or are planning much faster and more ambitious targets. For example, Apple already achieved carbon neutrality for its own operations and plans to achieve zero carbon over its supply chain by 2030. Intel and Sony aim to achieve 100 percent renewable electricity use not by 2050 like Samsung but by 2030. Even the average target year for the members of the global initiative, RE100, is 2030.

Samsung's too-slow plan doesn't match with the scientific reality we face. A new multi-agency report titled "United in Science" published on Sept. 13, coordinated by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), underscores that the ambition of GHG emissions reduction by 2030 needs to be seven times higher than the current level to ever achieve the 1.5 Celsius degrees goal of the Paris Agreement.

In his address at the General Assembly on 20 September, the U.N. Secretary General also said that "the climate crisis is the defining issue of our time" and stressed that "global GHGs emissions need to be slashed by 45 percent by 2030 to have any hope of reaching net zero emissions by 2050".

We can evaluate how serious Samsung is in climate mitigation with how much it plans to invest in climate action up to 2030 as the EU plans to invest 1 trillion euros for the European Green Deal and the U.S. plans to invest $430 billion with its Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

Samsung announced to invest 7 trillion won ($4.96 billion) for its environmental initiatives by 2030. Even though it says the figure excludes costs related to expansion of renewable energy use, it seems that it is not planning to invest more than 1 trillion won per year. It is a tiny amount compared to its latest sales of 280 trillion won or profit of 52 trillion won. Even Samsung spends more than 10 trillion won on marketing alone every year.

Of course, it's not solely Samsung's role and responsibility if it wants to use renewable power much more and faster in South Korea, where approximately 70 percent of Samsung's global electricity consumption occurs.

Power generation from solar and wind in South Korea in 2021 were 22 terawatt-hours (TWh) and 3 TWh respectively, while Samsung Electronics alone consumed 18.4 TWh in 2021. Therefore, it is difficult for Samsung to purchase much renewable power even if it wants.

Furthermore, it is very unlikely that the situation of lacking a renewable power supply will get better in the near future, because the new government disclosed its draft of the 10th Basic Plan for Electricity Supply and Demand on Aug. 30, in which it will not increase but lower the 2030 new and renewable power generation share target from 30.2 percent to 21.5 percent from the current level of 7.5 percent.

Therefore, Samsung needs to be proactively involved in advocacy for more and affordable renewable power in its home country together with other Korean and foreign RE100 members who have operations in South Korea, as Japan Climate Leaders' Partnership (JCLP) does in Japan, demanding a more ambitious renewable energy expansion plan by the government.

Han Jong-hee, the CEO of Samsung Electronics, emphasized in the announcement that, "The climate crisis is one of the greatest challenges of our time. The consequences of inaction are unimaginable." I hope Samsung soon upgrades its insufficient targets and budgets aligned with what it said.

Jang Daul (daul.jang@greenpeace.org) is a government relations and advocacy specialist at Greenpeace East Asia Seoul Office.