RWE AG - Sustainable corporate governance - As one of Europe’s leading energy suppliers, we bear a responsibility to our customers, employees and society at large. As a company which thinks and plans ahead, we also have a duty to the generations that will come after us. Protecting the climate and the environment and using resources sparingly are especially important here.

RWE at a glance
Responsibility
Sustainable Corporate Governance

Sustainable corporate governance

As one of Europe’s leading energy suppliers, we bear a responsibility to our customers, employees and society at large. As a company which thinks and plans ahead, we also have a duty to the generations that will come after us. Protecting the climate and the environment and using resources sparingly are especially important here.

Supplying energy is a long-term business, meaning that we have to think ahead and act accordingly. This includes

identifying political and social trends as early as possible and working these into our planning;
reacting swiftly and appropriately to changes on the market;
developing supply concepts for decades to come;
making investment decisions in the order of billions.

For us, the path to rising revenues and long-term business success is profitable growth and the reduction of our carbon emissions. This presupposes widespread acceptance of what we do in society at large. To win the trust of society, however, we first have to address our stakeholders’ concerns and expectations and to reconcile these with our own economic objectives. Conflicts of interest have to be addressed and resolved in a way that is convincing for all concerned.

We have therefore subjected the challenges posed by sustainable and forward-thinking corporate governance to systematic analysis along the full length of the value chain. The analysis produced ten clearly delineated areas for action upon which our CR strategy rests. This has enabled us to specify in some detail what sustainable and responsible development at RWE means in practice, which in turn will help facilitate implementation of the Group strategy. Our CR programme describes how we intend to deliver on our objectives.

Our CR strategy is integrated in all our divisions and all our processes. Our Group-wide CR management is there to oversee the targets defined in the CR programme and to ensure that these are met. The bedrock upon which our socially and economically responsible conduct rests is the RWE Code of Conduct, which in turn is based on the UN Global Compact.