Message from the Chief Environmental Strategy Officer

Nations around the world must work together if we are to deal with increasingly apparent climate change, ecosystem destruction, and other global environmental threats. We must also foster high levels of environmental consciousness in each of our employees and use their core business strengths to help resolve environmental problems.
The Hitachi Group is currently focusing management resources on the Social Innovation Business to contribute to the development of a sustainable social infrastructure. In 2008, we created Environmental Vision 2025, our long-term plan for reducing CO2 emissions—a top-priority issue—through business operations. Our goal is to help reduce annual CO2 emissions by 100 million tonnes by fiscal 2025 through Hitachi products and services. In fiscal 2010, we succeeded in reducing CO2 emissions by 15.51 million tonnes. We achieved this reduction through the use of highly efficient gas turbines, wind power generation systems, and other energy infrastructure that emit less CO2, as well as through the global provision of power-saving products and services. Sales of Eco-Products, products meeting rigorous environmentally conscious criteria, jumped by 7 percent on the previous year to 60 percent of all sales. We aim to make all Group products and services Eco-Products by fiscal 2025.
The recent Great East Japan Earthquake prompted countries around the world to review their energy policies as well as energy supply and demand. Current mechanisms will have to be revised in the coming years to respond to increasingly diverse energy-related values and needs.
The Hitachi Group will lead the way by supplying products and services, such as low-carbon power supply systems, energy-saving solutions for transportation and industry, and IT-based energy control and monitoring technologies. We will also contribute to the use of sustainable energies that offer energy security through technology development geared to diversifying needs. In the short term, we will focus on optimizing and boosting the efficiency of products and services; over the long term, that focus will shift to developing city functions that enable high energy efficiency and minimal environmental loads.
In fiscal 2011, we launched the Third Environmental Action Plan, which sets out a high-level goal of reducing global CO2 emissions by 10 percent per unit of production by fiscal 2015 (compared with fiscal 2005 levels). We will steadily move ahead with that plan, as well as work to develop more environmentally conscious products, factories, and offices. We also look forward to working together with customers using Hitachi products and services to help reduce CO2 emissions through our products.
We are committed to reflecting world trends and stakeholder views in our future improvements and innovations, growing as a corporate group that contributes to the realization of a sustainable society.