Management & facts

We also contribute to resource efficiency at the workplace by endeavoring to use as many green office supplies as possible. In 2022, over 65 percent of all of our catalog-based office supplies in Germany were sustainable. We also took the following measures in Germany:

• Our “IT Remarketing” project: Used IT hardware is refurbished so that it can be reused.
• Our partner, the charitable organization “AfB gemeinnützige GmbH” (only available in German), which offers jobs for people with limitations, receives some of our used IT hardware (e.g., laptops) for reconditioning and reselling.
• In our catalog of office supplies, over 65 percent of products are classified as sustainable, meaning they have been awarded a label recommended by the German Environment Agency (UBA). This is an increase of 15 percent from the previous year. The labels in question include the EU Ecolabel, the Fairtrade seal, the Organic Farming seal, the Blue Angel eco-label, and the FSC® and PEFC environmental labels. Office supplies are delivered largely in accordance with the carbon neutrality certificate.
• The goal of our “Paperless Office” project is to increase the number of e-books and e-papers used in our company to save even more paper.
• Since 2018, we have worked with a paper wholesaler to purchase only environmentally certified paper that has been awarded the Blue Angel certificate.
• To reduce the amount of paper used throughout the Group, we ask our employees to opt out of having salary statements sent by post, and we provide them online instead. Many other apps digitize paper-based processes and thus contribute to paper avoidance such as sick leave via app , travel expense reporting, time booking, etc.
• On our “You and Me UNITED” social network, we also offer our employees a platform where they can exchange used office supplies instead of ordering new supplies.
• To meet the requirements of the Minamata Convention  and curb mercury emissions, we are working to modernize the media technology used in our company.

Less food waste in cafeterias
Since 2020, we have been offering our employees discounted items in the cafeterias after 4 p.m. at two locations in Germany. Employees can purchase items that would otherwise have to be thrown away, such as baked goods, salads, and muesli, at half price. In 2022, a large proportion of our employees worked from home, which is why there was a drop in take-up of the offer. For the spring of 2023, we expect our employees to take advantage of the offer of discounted items more frequently again.

In addition, our staff have had the option, since 2021, of getting their midday meal as a takeaway lunch in reusable containers (“REBOWL”) that have a 5 euro deposit. The containers can be returned to any REBOWL partner. Our employees have responded well to this offer: more than 10 000 of the reusable containers are now in circulation. Since 2022, containers with microwave-safe lids have been made available, with a second, smaller container due to be rolled out in 2023.

We have joined forces with Sodexo, the company running our cafeterias in Germany, to introduce the RECUP returnable cup at many Deutsche Telekom sites in Germany. More than 45 000 RECUP returnable cups have been purchased since the pilot. As a sustainable alternative, one reusable RECUP can replace around 500 disposable cups and can then simply be recycled. In return for a deposit of 1 euro, our employees get their coffee or tea in a reusable RECUP. This can be handed in to any participating partner, where the deposit is returned and the cup washed and reused.

We are currently carrying out projects in this area in various Board of Management departments. The common goal: we want to achieve our climate protection targets, implement the circularity requirement, and introduce a holistic total cost of ownership (TCO ) approach for our network and IT infrastructure.

• Projects to promote energy efficiency and energy saving measures in Germany and Europe
• Group-wide innovation project for developing new approaches for optimization of energy use and costs
• Modernizing our network infrastructure
• Network circularity

Promotion of resource efficiency in the national companies
Apart from the centrally controlled projects in this area, the national companies are implementing additional measures to promote circularity and resource efficiency in the network and IT infrastructure. In the United States, efficiency in data centers is being improved through cold aisle containment. We are also enhancing efficiency in Greece through the use of immersion cooling, a new method which involves immersing some of the hardware in a liquid that conducts heat, but not electricity. This delivers energy savings of up to 90 percent for cooling, boosts productivity generally and reduces the carbon footprint by up to 30 percent. Hungary is promoting the use of renewable energies: For a donation, employees sponsor solar modules that supply electricity to a training building. In return, employees receive various benefits, such as an extra day of vacation. Other examples include PC recycling at Magenta Telekom in Austria and the refurbishment of mobile masts in Romania.

We want to make our buildings in Germany as sustainable as possible. To that end, we are implementing various measures to reduce their carbon emissions, improve their energy balance, optimize waste separation, and facilitate longer use of their furniture.

Reducing vacancy is one of the most effective ways to increase sustainability, since lower vacancy levels can lead to significant carbon-emissions and energy savings. We are currently examining our future office-space requirements, and developing plans that will enable us to use our office space in the best possible way. In the process, we are testing new, more-flexible space/office concepts. The overall aim is to optimize space utilization in our buildings. Also, we are reducing our unused office space – for example, by subletting it. Such efforts are enabling us to prevent vacancies and save energy.

Over 42 000 square meters of building space in Germany were certified to LEED or BREEAM standards in 2022. Additionally, approximately one million square meters of office space meet the criteria of a sustainable building standard, despite not being certified.

Energy efficiency
In order to minimize the energy requirements of our buildings in Germany, we are carrying out a range of measures, including the following:

• To identify anomalies in energy consumption, we use specific indicators such as “kilowatt hours per square meter” to compare similar facilities. In addition, we analyze the course of energy consumption (load profile) of individual buildings. On the basis of the findings from such analysis, we initiate measures to prevent peak loads and optimize energy use, with the aim of reducing total energy requirements.
• We use communication measures, including a poster campaign in 2022, to raise awareness of energy consumption among our employees and motivate them to be energy-conscious in the workplace.
• We pay attention to energy efficiency during construction and renovation work on a building’s exterior.

We also implemented the German federal government’s Energy Saving Ordinance, introduced due to the critical energy supply situation, in 2022. This saw us switch off advertising equipment day and night, not only temporarily. We also turned down the room temperature of our office buildings to as low as 19 degrees Celsius, cutting consumption by around 6 percent for each degree. Through these measures, we contributed in the year under review to efforts to secure Germany’s energy supply and make up shortfalls in supply.

The Deutsche Telekom subsidiary Power & Air Solutions (PASM ) procures energy for the Deutsche Telekom Group companies in Germany. Its energy management system is certified as per the ISO 50001  international standard. In addition, our office buildings undergo an energy audit  pursuant to DIN standard 16247 every four years.

Heating and hot water
We regularly assess the need for repairs at our properties in Germany and conduct cost-effectiveness analyses to further reduce our energy consumption for heating and hot water. Measures include:

• Energy optimization of heating systems (e.g., by replacing old burner technologies)
• Updating heat generators and related hydraulic components (such as pumps and valves)
• Using waste heat (e.g., by using heat recovery systems)
• Using combined heat and power (e.g., from cogeneration plants or district heating)
• Reducing supply losses when heating water (e.g., by switching to local hot water supply)

Electricity
Building services account for the biggest share of electricity consumption in office buildings (e.g., pumps, ventilation and cooling systems, building automation systems, elevators, and lighting). To reduce electricity consumption, we are focusing on the following measures in Germany:

• Using LED lighting and motion sensors
• Turning off light sources (advertising pylons) at night
• Controlling the room temperature of our network infrastructure more accurately
• Using efficient building services (e.g., high-efficiency pumps, frequency-controlled motors for ventilation systems)
• Optimizing pre-programmed usage profiles (such as through absence profiles)
• Using efficient building automation systems
• We are also adding additional charging stations for electric cars to our parking areas in order to promote electromobility.

Internet of Things  (IoT) and innovations
In Germany, we are optimizing our facility management with the help of sensor technologies. This includes the following measures:

• Using sensor technology to actively control indoor temperatures in buildings in real time
• Using predictive maintenance in elevator maintenance and repair
• Using predictive weather-dependent building technology controls
• Using thermal and fluidic building simulation to increase the efficiency of buildings and their building services
• Using sensors to collect building usage data. We utilize this data to optimize the energy consumption and cost-effectiveness of our shops across the board.

Sustainable Deutsche Telekom buildings outside Germany
Internationally, we are also implementing measures to reduce energy consumption, such as optimizing the energy efficiency of major sites and switching off advertising pylons at night. We carried out simulation tests in 2022 to identify energy-saving potential in technical buildings. The results showed that technical equipment can be designed with lower capacity in these cases, making it possible to improve power distribution readings. As a result, adjustments have been made to the internal planning process and the reading process has been digitalized. We also carry out campaigns to raise awareness among our employees of the need to save energy. For Earth Hour during the year under review, for example, our national company in Croatia shut off the power in its buildings for one hour.

In Greece, three buildings of the OTE Group received LEED Gold (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification: the Kerameikos office building; the Cosmote TV Services building; and the Group’s Solonos office building in central Athens, which was renovated in 2020. All three were certified to the Gold level under the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) international LEED certification scheme for green and sustainable buildings. The Mill Park building of IT Services Hungary in Budapest also received LEED certification.

Over 150 000 square meters of our building space were certified to LEED or a comparable standard in 2022. Additionally, over 120 000 square meters of office space abroad meet the criteria of a sustainable building standard, despite not being certified.

As part of Deutsche Telekom, T-Systems has also committed itself to the Group’s Group-wide climate targets and integrated sustainability into its strategy. T-Systems set up its own program to these ends in 2020. The program spans all functions and areas at T-Systems. The fundamental internal measures and areas are:

Reducing our own ecological footprint
With a view to reducing its carbon emissions in an effective way, T-Systems has determined a baseline figure for its company-wide carbon footprint for the base year 2019 and identified its largest emissions sources. In addition, it has initiated a range of further analyses, including assessments of product-related emissions during products’ service lives, and including emissions generated on the customer side. These will identify areas that present particular potential for reducing the ecological footprint. To this end, T-Systems maintains close contact with suppliers and is working on zero-emission products. It has signed memoranda of understanding with key suppliers Lenovo and Cisco, facilitating joint work to address the topics of energy efficiency and climate neutrality. In this way, T-Systems is also contributing to the achievement of Deutsche Telekom’s Group-wide climate goals.

Carbon-emissions reductions in operations
The Group-wide conversion of all of the Group’s own buildings to renewable energy by the end of 2021 also extended to T-Systems’ data centers. The centers use electricity from renewable energies, and one data center in Spain is fitted with its own photovoltaic system. We are also gradually making the data centers more energy-efficient, with the aid of innovative technologies and artificial intelligence. For example, the well-water cooling system at the data center in Munich has been optimized with the help of an AI system. T-Systems joined the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact back in 2021. With this move, it has committed to making all of its own data centers, and the externally operated data centers within its sphere, climate neutral by 2030. Additionally, in the year under review, it launched a research initiative in cooperation with the Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation IFF, with the aim of developing measures to make its data-center operations more sustainable. This effort also extends to the overall aim of enabling data centers to become energy self-sufficient, via intelligent interaction between renewable energy generation, power storage and flexible management of current loads.

Data center energy efficiency
As an operator, T-Systems is careful to use energy-efficient server and storage hardware. It is also considering options for saving energy by raising the cooling temperature at its data centers. Software features which allow unused hardware to be switched off entirely without affecting currently running applications will be used for further optimizations. To this end, work will be carried out all the way down to the level of individual computer components and processors. The medium- to long-term goal is to refine the applications used in the cloud to meet energy efficiency requirements (green coding). We are working with suppliers to determine emissions-reduction targets and develop zero-emission products. Our partner Shell, for instance, installed new immersion cooling technology for boosting processing power and energy efficiency at a T-Systems data center in Amsterdam in 2022.

Raising employee awareness
Employees also play an important role in reducing our carbon footprint at T-Systems. For example, T-Systems is reducing business travel and relying on videoconferencing for meetings. In addition, the company’s employees, at all of its production sites and in all countries in which it is located, are being made more aware of the need to think and act with sustainability in mind (the company is doing this, for instance, by promoting alternative mobility solutions, participating in “campaign days” focused on sustainability, participating in sustainability-oriented workshops, and providing information about ways to reduce power and resource consumption). These efforts are being supported by employee initiatives focused on sustainability, such as the T-Green Team in Brazil and a sustainability program in Hungary that has over 80 green volunteers. An employee training course was developed in 2022 to train up staff members as sustainability ambassadors. Over 300 employees have already completed the course, which has also now been rolled out throughout the Group. Additionally, the practice of mobile working in Germany has allowed us to reduce our building capacity in the country by 70 000 square meters, which has also cut heating and district-heating emissions.

Green fleet
T-Systems is aiming to make its fleet of vehicles more sustainable – by relying to a greater extent on e-mobility in particular. In February 2022, it published a revised “e-car-only car policy” that defines additional steps toward greener mobility. After switching to an electric vehicle fleet in May 2022, there has been an increase in orders for electric vehicles, which now account for 90 percent of all company car orders, up on the figure of approximately 33 percent prior to May 2022. T-Systems International had a total of 1 216 company cars in its fleet at the end of 2022, 164 of which were electric vehicles. At this same time, almost all of our Meet & Connect Hubs had been fitted with charging stations, with installation work at the remaining hubs set to be completed in early 2023. Meet & Connect Hubs are the central locations of T-Systems and are designed to offer the ideal environment for working in teams. They provide collaboration rooms and innovative spaces that cover a whole range of requirements and uses.

Enablement of our customers
T-Systems seeks to support its customers in making purchasing decisions. To this end, it successively determines the ecological impacts of its solutions and provides this information transparently. For example, to determine the carbon footprints of solutions, T-Systems uses an impact measurement approach in accordance with the Group-wide Impact Measurement Blueprint, that also includes social and economic factors and looks at the entire value chain. An important factor in impact measurement consists of the positive carbon-footprint impacts our customers realize through the use of T-Systems’ ICT  solutions. To ensure that the carbon footprint of new and existing solutions is minimized, T-Systems created the Sustainability Design Guideline, which is currently being implemented and set to be observed in all product developments in future. Such efforts have been paying off: in 2022, a market analysis by the Information Services Group (ISG) found T-Systems to once again be a leader in sustainability and ESG  services in Germany.

A sustainable digitalization strategy leverages the benefits of digital technology while at the same time meeting the requirements of sustainability. Adopting a holistic, end-to-end portfolio strategy, from strategy to implementation, T-Systems offers services in the following areas:

1. Sustainability advisory services:

• T-Systems works with technology consulting provider Detecon to support business customers with developing an effective digital sustainability strategy that takes account of both the complexity of the technology and the ecosystem of its customers. The six key steps that are completed in the process are as follows: definition of scope and identification of data gaps, maturity assessment and environmental principles, ambition level, specific measures, governance, and change management.
• Since 2021, the portfolio has been successfully expanded to include additional ESG solutions that incorporate social and regulatory aspects, and refined further.
• Working with digital sustainability consulting services allows T-Systems to add a technical focus to this strategic advisory work. This includes providing advice on sustainability data, sustainability innovation, and sustainability system integration.

2. Sustainability management solutions:

T-Systems provides management solutions to help its customers collect, monitor, check, document and improve all sustainability-related data for their organization and beyond.

A number of offerings from T-Systems:

• Syrah SDG (Sustainable Development Goals ) Dashboard: This tool creates a complete SDG dashboard with 50 KPIs in the space of three months. It shows the current state of a city or region’s SDG performance, provides transparency as to the effects of sustainability measures, and enables comparison with other cities and regions.
• Supply Chain Transparency Suite: This tool provides a solution for meeting obligations under the German Supply Chain Act.
• Impact Measurement Tool: This tool serves to determine the environmental impact of a product or service along the entire supply chain.

3. Sustainability industry solutions:

T-Systems helps customers to implement the digital solutions best suited to their specific sustainability requirements.

Example products/services:

• Mobility and logistics: Low Carbon Mobility Management is a patented, app-based system for calculating the carbon emissions and energy consumption of vehicles, displaying current consumption/emission status in real time. The goal is to optimize driving behavior, including route selection.
• Automotive & manufacturing: CARbon Footprint Fleet Optimizer is a cloud-based solution for making vehicle fleets sustainable. It facilitates intelligent fleet design, using the pre-defined parameters of carbon budget (Scopes 1-3), number of vehicles, and planned usage in kilometers (for Scope 3 calculation) to recommend vehicle configurations and identifies potential for cutting carbon emissions.
• Public sector: Process automation/PEGA as a Service is an end-to-end procedure for process and service automation. It is designed to reduce business trips and paper use, and at the same time promote digitalization of administrative processes within public authorities.

4. Sustainable IT services:

T-Systems’ data centers around the world have been running on 100 percent renewable energy since 2021. This means that renewable energy is sourced directly wherever it is available, and emissions are offset through the purchase of certificates whenever it is not available. Additionally, the susTain tool can be used to calculate how much our business customers could cut their carbon emissions by switching to our IT infrastructure and services.

Partnerships in the ESG area
Customers also become downstream partners with whom we work on innovations and services. The goal is to accelerate customers’ digital transformation processes and invest jointly with them in new business models that will focus on the decarbonization of society.

Since 2021, T-Systems has been a member of the Climate Neutral Data Centre Self-Regulatory Initiative, which is working to see data centers operating on a climate-neutral basis by 2030. Cooperation is also set to be stepped up with pioneering innovators from our successful start-up program TechBoost.

Additionally, T-Systems is an industry partner to legislators and the research sector. One example of this is our partnership with the Fraunhofer Institut, with whom we are developing innovative green technologies for cloud computing  and our data center in Biere (Germany). Another example, this time at international level, is our partnership with the University of Granada, which sees us establishing a Chair of Innovations in Digital Sustainability to drive research activity.

T-Systems is collaborating with Group subsidiary Comfort Change to offer a solution for any individual or company wishing to establish, operate or use an electric charging infrastructure. The complete package includes everything required to set up charging stations, including excavation work, full logistics, hardware and software installation, maintenance, and post-launch troubleshooting. Remote monitoring allows faults to be cleared swiftly, with support provided by local service teams if required.

As a service provider, almost all of the water we use is consumed within the scope of our office activities. Similarly, water consumption only plays a minor role along our supply chain. For that reason, water is not a main focal area in our CR management activities. Nevertheless, our environmental guideline does call for reducing our water consumption. We measure our annual consumption by means of our water consumption indicator.

In the year under review there was a slight 11 percent decrease in Group-wide water consumption.

We provide detailed information on the figures for each individual company in our interactive benchmarking tool.

One major cause of species extinction is the fact that more and more space is being taken up by industry, agriculture, and transportation. As a telecommunications company, we take up significantly less space compared to companies in many other industries. However, our business activities can also impact biodiversity in other areas of our value chain – particularly with our suppliers at the start of the chain. This is why our suppliers must also comply with our environmental principles. We verify this regularly during our on-site ¥¥¥social audits ¥¥¥.

We drew up a statement in 2022 specifying how we contribute to conserving biodiversity and protecting forests from clearance activities. Our commitment to biodiversity conservation and protection from deforestation sets out the measures we are implementing to this end along our value chain. This includes our approach to sustainable purchasing, our climate strategy and our practice of taking aspects of biodiversity into account in our network expansion work.

ICT  solutions can help preserve biodiversity. In our “Bee and Me” project, intelligent sensors are being used to collect data from beehives and transmit them to beekeepers. The beekeeper simply needs to look at their smartphone or tablet app  to find out whether their bees are healthy. They can then take action if they notice any anomalies. To date, we have established a total of 42 beehives in Europe (including 23 conventional hives and 19 “digital” ones that are equipped with sensors), providing a home to some 1.7 million bees in total. There was no change in the inventory of the hives in 2022.

We also cooperate with environmental and nature conservation organizations. Proceeds from our various cell phone collection campaigns  (only available in German) in Germany have so far benefited the following organizations (only available in German), among others: Landesbund für Vogelschutz Bayern e.V.; Pro Wildlife e.V; Frankfurt Zoological Society (projects for the protection of gorillas); and Hellabrunn Zoo, Munich (species protection projects).

The safety of the electromagnetic fields  used in mobile communications is a publicly discussed issue. In 2022, the possible impacts of such fields on animals and plants continued to be debated. The Federal Office for Radiation Protection has determined that there is no scientific evidence (only available in German) that high-frequency fields below the legal limits endanger plant and animal life.

In the fight against climate change, we support international reforestation projects. Trees store carbon, produce oxygen, regulate the water balance, provide a habitat for countless species, and thereby promote biodiversity. In 2020, we officially terminated our active partnership with the Plant-for-the-Planet foundation, after its work was widely and publicly criticized. Many of our employees remain active within the foundation’s “Trillion Tree Campaign” initiative, however, with efforts such as organizing tree-sponsorship donations or tree-planting campaigns. For this reason, the number of planted seedlings shown in our interactive tree counter (only available in German) continues to grow. In our Magenta Forest campaign, we have now grouped the various projects underway throughout the Group in this context, thereby highlighting the fact that many small efforts can add up to make a big difference. One and all are welcome to participate in this campaign – by having trees planted, via an online site; making donations; or joining with others to plant trees in their local areas and have them registered, along with their geodata. Donors can also have their names displayed within the virtual Magenta Forest. In addition, we have asked our employees to use the Ecosia search engine for their internet searches wherever possible. Use of Ecosia contributes to global afforestation, and to our Magenta Forest: with the income it generates from search engine advertising, Ecosia plants trees in over 30 countries, in cooperation with local organizations. In 2022, our Ecosia searches financed over 60 530 tree plantings. Together with the trees we planted ourselves as well as donated trees, our Magenta Forest grew by over 1 030 trees in the year under review.

The property used by Deutsche Telekom Group covers most of our demands for technology, office, common, call center, shop and storage space as well as providing space for other needs. Total take-up decreased year-on-year with a total of 11 876 757 square meters.