Sustainability

An Environment and Energy Promotion Committee was established, so that the introduction of environmental protection concepts into daily work routines can be planned and carried out systematically, to raise awareness of saving energy, to reduce carbon emissions, to continue promoting behavior that saves energy, and to formulate a plan to cut waste.

 In 2014, the ISO 14001 Environment Management System was implemented in the headquarters building. In 2016, the ISO: 50001 Energy Management System was implemented in the headquarters building. It’s been verified by the British Standards Institute and continues to improve in accordance with the management system by the planned and systematic PDCA management model. In 2022, ISO 14001 and ISO 50001 environmental and energy management systems were implement in all important subsidiaries and all of them have been certified by the British Standards Institution.

Using average power use in 2015 as a benchmark and office personnel power consumption as the energy efficiency index, energy savings will improve 20% until 2020. By comprehensively updating lighting equipment, we reached our goal earlier than planned. The current target is to reduce electricity consumption by 2%, water consumption by 3%, and waste by 2% each year compared to the base year of 2020, and to reduce photocopying paper usage by 5%. Promote reduction each year to achieve real improvement in benefits. In 2020, ISO 14064-1 Greenhouse Gas Emissions was implement in the headquarters building to actively control and reduce carbon emissions generated by enterprises. In 2023, the ISO 14064-1 GHG inventory will be expanded to 60% of Taiwan branch office, and it is expected to expand 100% in 2024.

Environment and Energy Promotion Committee

Waste and Wastewater

To reduce the volume of waste the Taiwan headquarters has installed recycling collection areas on all floors, including collection of paper, plastic, aluminum and other metals. After simple sorting by employees, the building property management personnel undertake more specific sorting and handling, and finally a recycling company takes the items. In 2022, a total of 229.63 tons of waste and garbage in Taiwan, of which 81.31 tons are recycled and 148.37 tons are not recycled (including kitchen waste), the total carbon emission of unrecycled waste incineration disposal is 50.43 tons/CO2. Each subsidiary overseas has its waste similarly handled by a local property management company. Beginning in 2014 the Taiwan headquarters began recycling of leftover food from prepared meals. Employees perform a simple sorting operation after which a livestock feeding company handles the remains. A cleanup company processes ordinary garbage through incineration.

The headquarters water source is within the Taipei Waterworks. It does not have any groundwater or other source of water supply, and water at the building is only for employee use. The household wastewater thus produced is discharged into sanitary sewers. Overseas, Chailease subsidiaries discharge wastewater into underground wastewater conduits and thence into rivers and the ocean. There is no significant impact on water sources.

Energy and Water Management

According to the energy and resource usage statistics of each operating site of the company, the total water withdrawal in 2022 is 34,793 liters(34.793 megaliters) in Taiwan, and the total electricity consumption of the company is 6,708,585 MWh (24,150,906 GJ) in Taiwan. In 2022, the per capita electricity consumption in Taiwan will be reduced by 2.86% and the per capita water consumption will be reduced by 16.43% compared with the previous year (due to office space, the water discharge is negligible). The company continues to implement various energy-saving and carbon-reduction measures and promotions to enhance employees' awareness of environmental protection and reduce per capita consumption.

The use of internal operational energy will be reduced before setting a gradual increase in the ratio of renewable energy use every year. In 2023, Company Headquarters in Neihu already switched to supplying 770,000 kWh (2,772 gigajoules) of green electricity, and will gradually increase this amount annually in hopes of using 100% green electricity across Taiwan by 2030.

For overseas subsidiaries of Chailease Holdings, the total water withdrawal from water stress areas (medium-high to high) was 29,540 kWh (29.54 million liters). Please refer to the environmental sustainability related data in the Appendix.

Carbon Emission

Chailease Holding has long conformed to government greenhouse gas reduction targets. By keeping an organization-wide GHG inventory, we can not only track our carbon emissions, but also formulate a GHG emissions reduction plan. In 2019, the Scope 3, missions directly and indirectly resulting from employee business travel and upstream emissions.

To calculate carbon emission for Taiwan employee business travel by air and high-speed rail, Chailease referred to the ICAO website and the Taiwan High Speed Rail website’s carbon footprint chart. Future internal procedures for Scope 3 inventories will follow those for Scope 1, direct emissions, and Scope 2, indirect emissions such as purchasing electricity. We will actively expand the scope of our inventory and the geographical areas to eventually include overseas operations.

In 2022, our company has passed the verification of a third-party verification ISO14064-1 GHG inventory (CO2, CH4, N2O, HFCS, PFCS, SF6, NF3). Certificates include Category 1, Category 2, business travel, waste transportation and incineration, purchase of goods and services. The scope of this verification has been expanded from the headquarters to the Chiayi office, accounting for 60% of the offices in the Taiwan branch office, and is expected to reach 100% by 2024. This information will enable Chailease to implement a GHG reduction plan and actively control and reduce our emissions to help slow down climate change.

Notes:

  1. The table is calculated by self, only the HQ building to Chiayi office has been verified by the third party.(Scope 1: 404.66 mt/CO2e, Scope 2: 2,988.22 mt/CO2e, Scope 3: 837.45 mt/CO2e [business travels: 105.58 mt/CO2e, disposal of solid and liquid waste: 36.33mt/CO2e, photocopying paper: 86.05mt/CO2e, electricity upstream: 517.80 mt/CO2e, gasoline upstream: 91.69 mt/CO2]. Certificate documents attached behind)
  2. Scope 1 primarily covers emissions from company car gasoline use. The calculation is based on the EPA GHG Emission Factor Table (version 6.0.4) and totals 2.263 liters of CO2e / liter of gasoline. Others (fixed, process, fugitive) are verified by a third party to be emission-free.
  3. Scope 2 emissions primarily comprise electricity use. Calculations are based on the Bureau of Energy’s electric power emissions factors and total the following for each year: 0.509(2019), 0.502(2020), 0.509(2021), 0.509(2022) liters of CO2e / kWh.
  4. Scope 3 covers emissions resulting from employee business travel on airplanes and high-speed rail, disposal of solid and liquid waste, photocopying paper, electricity upstream and gasoline upstream emissions. Airplane emissions calculations are based on the ICAO website’s Carbon Emissions Calculator (http://www.icao.int/environmental-protection/CarbonOffset/Pages/default.aspx). High speed rail calculations are based on emissions of 34 grams of CO2e per person per kilometer (passenger-kilometer). Upstream emissions are based on Carbon Footprint Calculation Platform of ITRI (https://cfp-calculate.tw/cfpc/WebPage/LoginPage.aspx)
  5. The GWP value used is based on the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.
  6. The GHG inventory utilizes the operational control model to aggregate data.

The fire extinguishers in the headquarters building are all 10P-ABC dry powder fire extinguishers, and the sea dragon fire extinguishers containing chlorides and bromides that will affect the earth's ozone layer are not used. The main unit of the air conditioner used on the floor adopts the type of refrigerant R22; the water dispenser adopts R134a and R600a environmentally friendly refrigerants.The fire extinguishers in the headquarters building are all 10P-ABC dry powder fire extinguishers, and the sea dragon fire extinguishers containing chlorides and bromides that will affect the earth's ozone layer are not used.

In accordance with the “Code of Practice on Corporate Social Responsibility” approved by the Board of Directors in 2011 and the “Operational Procedures and Behavior Guidelines for Integrity Management” in 2014, Chailease Holdings' supplier management policy explicitly stipulates the legality and integrity of supplier management policies and requires suppliers to follow relevant regulations on issues such as environmental protection, occupational safety and health, or labor human rights, and to avoid dealing with those in conflict with the CSR policy. If a supplier is involved in a policy violation that has a significant impact on the environment and society in the supply source community, we may terminate or cancel the contract at any time.

The “Supplier Social Responsibility Code” was established in 2014 to regulate suppliers to meet ethical standards, respect labor and human rights, and environmental sustainability. In 2015, a new “Supplier Code of Conduct” was established to include violations of integrity contracts. In 2021, the revised name was changed to “Supplier Corporate Social Responsibility Code.” In 2022, rename”Supplier Human Rights and Environmental Sustainability Clause and Integrity Commitment” which added Integrity Commitment Clause. in the hope that suppliers will work together to achieve the goals of good ethical standards, respect for labor and human rights, and environmental sustainability, and the content of the code includes labor, environment, safety and health, anti-corruption & anti-bribery, ethics and management standards for sustainable development. The main types of suppliers are consulting services, interior design services, information technology services and energy technology services.

Implementation Measures
  1. Holding communication meetings: Holding periodic communication meetings with suppliers to promote CSR policies.
  2. Education and training promotion: Provide education and training to assist suppliers in building CSR management capabilities.
  3. Targeted suppliers: Suppliers with whom the Company's cumulative transaction amount reaches NT$1 million or more in the current year and who sign the "Commitment to Supplier Human Rights and Environmental Sustainability Terms".
Implementation
  1. Revised the “CSR Code for Suppliers”.
  2. Produced supplier education and training handouts and invited suppliers to participate in online courses.
  3. Chailease Holdings and its subsidiary suppliers signed the “Supplier Human Rights and Environmental Sustainability Clause and Integrity Commitment”, with a 100% completion rate.
  4. Sent out ESG self-assessment questionnaires to 87 suppliers, with a 100% completion rate. (There are 15 new suppliers in 2022, and 100% of them will be screened by environmental and social standards)
Evaluation Results

In order to promote suppliers' implementation of CSR, we will launch an online training course for suppliers in 2022 and require suppliers with an accumulated transaction amount of NT$1 million or more to complete an ESG self-assessment questionnaire. At the end of the year, we conducted an inventory of suppliers for Chailease Holdings and its subsidiaries. 87 of them met the requirements.

Evaluated Items

The average score of the ESG self-assessment survey was 65.91. Based on the performance of suppliers, those who did not achieve 50 points were analyzed for scale and industry attributes, and further subdivided into standard conditions for subsequent evaluation of counseling and improvement, and cooperation will be terminated if significant negative impacts are identified. At present, none of our suppliers are engaged in child labor, major labor cases, or major environmental impacts.

Chailease Energy-Promoting the positive cycle of solar photovoltaic supply chain

In order to drive the positive cycle of the solar power industry and the supply chain, and to bring into play the sustainable impact of the responsible supply chain, Chailease Energy, a subsidiary of Chailease Holdings, requires its suppliers to fulfill their corporate social responsibility, to provide a safe working environment, to value human rights in labor relations, to comply with ethical operation, and to promote environmental protection.

In early 2022, we also revised our supplier and partner selection criteria, institutionalized the promotion and evaluation of supplier and partner qualifications, and included environmental management, social commitment and Company operations with reference to the positive ESG list items. The written review is combined with on-site evaluation, scoring and evaluation to select suitable suppliers and partners as the priority reference for cooperation selection. We also require suppliers to sign a commitment letter and conduct occasional visits to track the continuous improvement in order to improve the performance of supply chain management and move forward together towards the goal of sustainable development.

We invest in sustainability management, including polysilicon and silicon crystals in upstream industries; solar cells and modules in midstream industries; and suppliers and construction materials and equipment in downstream industries, including system construction EPC (Engineering, Procurement, and Construction) manufacturers, aluminum brackets, steel structures, electrical and mechanical panel manufacturers, monitoring manufacturers, and other peripheral related industries.

Following an ESG project evaluation for the 26 new partners added this year, the average score was 52.69. Further analysis of their performance found that each company is operating legally and in compliance with the law. There are no companies with significant negative impacts that need to be terminated. However, due to the fact that most of the companies are small and medium-sized enterprises, factors such as operational performance meant minimal investment in environmental management policies and minimal performance in areas like sustainable work practices. As such, Chailease Holdings plans to share corporate resources in the future to help enhance the ESG awareness of its partners and improve their related performance.

In accordance with the green procurement policy promoted by the Environmental Protection Agency (the products with green labels and energy-saving labels, the certification fees for environmental and energy management systems) and with reference to the spirit of ISO 20400 sustainable procurement guidelines, the concept of sustainability management is incorporated into the procurement policy and procurement practices, requiring partner companies to participate in following green procurement guidelines and designing or producing products that meet green specifications in order to fulfill their corporate responsibilities and expand their influence. In 2022, we will select 100% of local manufacturers as our partners for all procurement cases.

In the “Supplier's Commitment to Human Rights and Environmental Sustainability”, suppliers are explicitly required to evaluate the environmental and social impacts of their procurement practices on the regions from which they supply, and to use relevant materials or services in a manner that protects the natural environment and safeguards the interests of local residents.

Use or procure energy-saving equipment and implement energy-saving measures as far as possible, and give priority to the use of recycled and reused alternative materials in the production of products or the provision of services in compliance with product quality requirements, in order to reduce the negative impact on the environment and society, and to avoid the use of substances that are harmful to the environment and local residents.

Reduce the emission of pollutants, toxic substances and waste, and properly dispose of waste in accordance with relevant laws and regulations to reduce the impact and harm to the environment.

In the supplier selection and management regulations, the raw material procurement policy encourages local procurement, procurement of energy-saving labeled products, and the adoption of friendly processes or the use of environmentally friendly materials and equipment.

Purchase Amounts

Chailease Holdings' headquarters in Neihu is promoting energy equipment improvement and green commodity procurement. We will continue to expand our scope and projects in the future.

Safety and Health Education Training and Counseling for Contractors

In 2022, there were total of 38 sessions of safety and health education training and counseling for the contractors of the headquarters building of the company with 184 people, and the completion rate of safety and health education and training is 100%. There were a total of 544 safety and health education training and counseling sessions for Chailease Holding’s Solar Energy’s contractors. The total number of workers trained by our general contractors was 3,073, and the rate of safety and health education training rate was 90.6%.