Earth Hour 2021: Drawing Attention to Climate Protection

The “Earth Hour” sees the world grow dimmer for an hour every March since 2007. Cities, companies and individuals worldwide take part in this climate and environmental protection campaign run by the World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF), by switching off lights in large buildings and their own homes.

This year’s Earth Hour slogan urges us to “Switch off for our world.” On March 27 at 8:30 p.m. local time, people, towns and cities, and businesses all over the world are called on to switch off non-essential lights for one hour. It is a way for people to demonstrate their support for greater climate protection at the flick of a switch.

Continental recently reformulated its sustainability ambition, which includes a commitment to achieving climate neutrality along the entire value chain by 2050 at the latest. “To make this possible, we have long since started to make the switch in our company, and by investing massively in energy efficiency at our locations we are addressing the issue of climate protection systematically as a top priority,” says Thomas Sewald, Head of Environmental & Climate Protection.

One important milestone on the road to climate neutrality was reached at the end of 2020, since when 100 percent of electricity purchased at all relevant production sites worldwide has demonstrably been generated from renewable sources. This equates to a reduction in CO2 emissions of around 70 percent or around 2.3 million metric tons of CO2 per year compared with energy from fossil fuels. All production is to be fully climate-neutral by 2040, with the entire value chain – from the procurement of raw materials through to end-of-life-cycle product recycling – to follow by 2050.