Pledge overview

What if we can mitigate climate change by reducing our carbon footprint and restoring nature? SAP accepts the challenge and is committed to plant 21 million trees by the end of 2025 while continuing to drive carbon-reducing innovations and pursuing a science-based climate target.

For more than a decade, sustainability has been on top of SAP’s agenda. It directly links to SAP’s purpose of helping the world run better and improving people’s lives. Facing the key challenges of the 21st century - climate change and planetary stability - SAP is committed to take much-needed climate action and plant 21 million trees to restore ecosystems and foster sustainable development by the end of 2025.

Restoring trees and reversing deforestation help to slow climate change, but these actions cannot reverse it on their own. Therefore, SAP is firstly committed to significantly reduce its own carbon footprint and support customers to do the same. As a green cloud company and market leader in enterprise application software, SAP is uniquely qualified to help customers manage and optimize their sustainability performance across their value chain by building capabilities into our core analytical and transactional systems and offering new solutions. In its own operations, SAP follows the carbon mitigation hierarchy ‘avoid, reduce, compensate’ and will become carbon-neutral by the end of 2023. SAP also pursues a science-based target which is aligned with the most ambitious target of the Paris Agreement to help limit the average temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

SAP finances tree planting and ecosystem restoration mainly through corporate donations, innovation and investments in high-quality carbon offsets for emissions that cannot yet be avoided. Special attention is paid to responsible reforestation approaches that are based on scientific and conservation knowledge and aim to foster biodiversity, intact water bodies as well as community inclusion and a good life for all. SAP also supports breakthrough research and field studies.

Because we believe in the power of collaboration, SAP will continue to team up with customers, partners and thought leaders to protect our planet and drive the transition to an inclusive, low-carbon, and circular economy - ultimately proving that we can build a future where our economy, society and environment prosper together. SAP encourages everyone to join the sustainability movement.

Our ecologically and socially responsible approach

SAP will continue to carefully select its planting partners based on their ecological and social implementation methods.

We ensure that all carbon offsets from reforestation projects are verified by high-quality standards such as the Gold Standard or VCS. For other projects, SAP has developed internal quality criteria to assess the sustainability of implementation practices.

Our system of accreditation

Progress on SAP’s pledge will be published in SAP’s annual Integrated Report which is externally audited. Purchased carbon offsets are verified by high-quality standards such as the Gold Standard.

Our locations

As a global company, we work with partners and finance projects worldwide. Our markets and countries that are highly affected by local deforestation, natural disasters or large-scale ecosystem destruction are preferred. In the past years, we have supported projects in Australia, Brazil, Guatemala, Haiti, Madagascar, Nepal, India, Indonesia, Senegal, United Kingdom, and more.