Making a Difference

Vision and approach to ESG

At Sunrock, we strongly believe that businesses have the power to make a positive impact. For over a decade, we have demonstrated to our customers, partners, and employees that choosing clean energy can help achieve this impact. Our services focus on making buildings more resilient for the future, protecting our clients' energy bills from volatile energy prices with low-cost solar energy, reducing their reliance on fossil fuels, and decreasing their carbon footprint at the same time.

But our commitment to protecting the environment goes beyond reducing carbon emissions through the use of solar power. We believe that generating renewable energy should also protect the fundamental interests of our employees and other stakeholders in our value chain. Our ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) approach is founded on the quest to become better and better at embedding internationally recognized human rights and environmental principles into our core business. We strive to go beyond compliance, develop new practices, share our learning with others, and collabourate across different platforms to make the sector as a whole more sustainable. To achieve this, we acknowledge the human rights and environmental challenges inherent in our sector and take responsibility for using our leverage to help move the needle. We aim to create value that goes beyond our core business and challenge us to go further and further.

Sunrock’s 10 ESG Guiding Principles

Build strong in-house expertise

Build trust with customers and partners on the topic

Engage stakeholders in defining strategies and implementing improvements

Share findings and be receptive to suggestions for improvement

Adopt key principles

Go beyond compliance to implement international ESG standards

Actively prevent (potential) harm to people

Reduce carbon footprint through energy efficiency and eco-friendly travel

Expect supplier commitment to ethical labour practices

10.

Be transparent on our process, progress and challenges

Sunrock’s value chain

2023 materiality assessment

Sunrock wants to thoroughly understand the financial as well as impact materiality topics, related to our operations. Therefore, in 2023, we conducted a double materiality assessment. This assessment involved consultations with internal and external stakeholders. It revealed that the majority of Sunrock’s material impact is related to our procurement of key components for our solar parks. Our actions regarding responsible sourcing are aimed at identifying specific areas in the value chain where such impacts are actual or potential.

Financial materiality

both own operations and

value chain impact

own operations

value chain impact

Pollution

Human rights in the value chain

Resource management and circularity

Biodiversity

Diversity and inclusion

Corporate culture

Privacy for the company's workforce

Climate change mitigation

Privacy for the company's end users

Working conditions in

the value chain

Working conditions for

company's workforce

Overview of the impact areas material to Sunrock

ESG in ’23

For 2023 our ESG goal was two-fold. The first was to increase the uptake of ESG in all departments. In practice, this starts with employees asking themselves the following: What does ESG mean for my role? How can I actively contribute? What can I do differently? We are drip-feeding ESG into the company, so to speak. We (patiently) make it part of our processes and mindset. In short, we want embedding ESG principles to become ’business as usual’. Our second objective was to make progress in the way we work with and select our suppliers. To improve the circumstances within our supply chain.

What were the highlights of 2023?

ESG uptake

We worked closely together with different teams and business units to implement the ESG goals. To illustrate:

We performed an extensive inclusion, equity and diversity survey with the People team. Not as a separate exercise as was the case in the 2022 survey, but integrated into the employee engagement survey. We also organized a workshop on unconscious bias, with the help of an external expert. How do you recognize it? Is it conscious or unconscious? How do we act on bias and - more importantly - prevent discrimination that can be a result of unconscious bias?
With the Asset Management team, we kicked off pilot projects to improve the circularity of obsolete solar modules.
With the legal team, we took actions to implement a whistle-blower system through which relevant stakeholders can reach out to us about observed illegal activities and other misconduct.

Improving our Supply chain visibility

We wish to thoroughly understand the impact of our supply chains. In as much detail as possible and concerning the direct as well as indirect implications for people and the planet. Therefore, we invited all of our EPC partners for an assessment to gain insight into their maturity in understanding and implementing ESG standards in their own operations and beyond. The assessments and dialogue that followed resulted in improvement actions the EPC partners are to take in 2023 and 2024. Sunrock also engaged with the EPC partners on how we can support them in this process. A good example of this are the audits we conducted in Germany and the Netherlands with our EPC partners to gain insight into the extent to which the migrant workers, that install our solar parks enjoy decent working conditions, at the minimum as legally required. This exercise helped us understand the areas where additional action needs to be taken in order to ensure that the rights of workers are respected by our contractors and their subcontractors respectively.

When it comes to ESG, we mean business. Our utmost objective for 2023 was to strengthen the alignment of our ESG strategy with our core business. We raised deeper awareness of what ESG means to different departments and encouraged buy-in for embedding ESG goals in day-to-day operations. We also rallied the support of our suppliers to step up their ESG efforts, and generated ownership among stakeholders in achieving ESG goals. We aim to deliver meaningful impact in partnership with others, even if this impact sometimes is (still) relatively small in the grand scheme of things.

So much to do in so little time...

From Promise to Proof: our 2030 Goals

Following a series of conversations with all ESG working groups of Sunrock, we formulated five concrete targets that capture the essence of our ESG ambition. These long term goals go beyond compliance. They ensure that we keep on improving the social and environmental impact in our value chain. They offer us focus, guide our ESG efforts and justify the allocation of resources to address our material impact on people and planet. With these ambitions, Sunrock also actively contributes to the achievement of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. Let’s have a closer look at them.

The primary purpose of Sunrock has always been to contribute to a clean energy future. We do this by providing clients with smart, (mainly) solar solutions. These help them reduce their reliance on fossil fuels and embrace cleaner sources. We aim to serve 2 million people with clean energy by 2030.

With our services, the development of solar parks, energy trading and strategic solutions, our clients are able to reduce their carbon footprint and thereby mitigate climate change, directly by supporting the UN Sustainable Development Goal 7 (the generation of affordable clean energy).

Goal 1. Accelerate the energy transition

In 2019/2020, we committed to the UN Science Based Target Initiative (SBTi), with the aim to reduce our scope 1 and 2 emissions by 50% by 2030. Meeting this goal requires the reduced use of fossil fuels for office heating and company cars. Sunrock also committed to measure and reduce scope 3 emissions. These result from, for example, the production and transport of materials used in solar parks, the commuting of employees and business travels. In 2023, Sunrock decided to level up the reduction of these emissions by 20%,* beyond the SBTi commitment.

*NOTE: 20% compared to the theoretical emissions scaled from the 2021 business-as-usual baseline figures* in 2030

Goal 2. Reduce own emissions

Everything we do, the products we procure as well as the process it takes to make them, requires materials and energy. At Sunrock we take responsibility to close the energy and material loop. We prefer re-use over recycling; and upcycling (high value recycling) over downcycling. In 2023 we have committed ourselves to re-using or upcycling at least 30% of the components we remove from the solar parks - starting with solar modules. What is left of obsolete parts is presented for 100% recycling. Circular economy practices like re-use and upcycling are essential in minimizing waste and maximizing resource efficiency.

Goal 3. Circularity is key

To truly know what happens in our supply chain, transparency is crucial. Especially when the polysilicon is concerned. By 2030, we strive to have suppliers who offer full insights into the source of the polysilicon they procure. To use our growing supply chain visibility to support other businesses and suppliers on the same journey, we also published these data on our website. We continue to collaborate intensively with other companies such as producers of cables, mounting systems and inverters to gain supply chain visibility.

Goal 4. Radical transparency

Sunrock’s employees should reflect society as a whole. Therefore, we actively recruit a wide diversity of people. The Sunrock family represents a diversity of talents from different educational, ethnic, religious and social backgrounds. In 2023, Sunrockers represented over 30 nationalities from all continents. But of course, that is just the beginning. True inclusion means when we make sure people feel welcome and at home, and are able to grow as a person as well as professionally. We see this plural and safe company culture as our shared responsibility, in which we have put great effort, also in 2023. Hence our commitment to achieve a gender diversity ratio of 40% in 2030, and 25% ethnic and cultural diversity.

Goal 5. Increase diversity

Empowering Change: Sunrock’s Employee-Driven Approach to ESG

At Sunrock, ESG runs through our veins. It is our core business to provide clean energy solutions to our clients, while minimizing the negative impact on people and the environment through the process. Obviously, we are committed to internationally recognized norms and principles for socially responsible, planet-friendly, and ethical business practices. But that is just the beginning. Better and Better means a mentality of perpetual awareness and improvement. We incorporate ESG principles with great dedication.

To organize this, we follow a two-sided approach. On the one hand, employees are responsible for both the ideas for improvement and the implementation of these ideas to make positive change. The ESG working groups consist of more than 30 engaged employees from all across Sunrock. Two of the groups have a chairperson and are supported by a dedicated ESG manager. The other two groups are chaired by the ESG manager. Apart from the working groups, the ESG steering committee helps to accelerates the constant improvements we wish to make. The steering committee consists among others the COO, CEO, CFO, Director of Operations in Germany, Technical Lead M&A and the Director of Strategy and is coordinated by the ESG manager.

ESG at Sunrock is implemented both from top-down to bottom-up, resulting in the buy-in and participation of both employees and leadership.

ESG Steering Committee consisting of the CEO, CFO, COO, Director of Strategy, Technical Lead M&A, Director of Operations in Germany and the ESG Manager

Working group on Environment

Working group on

People welfare

Working group on

Supply chain transparency + accountability

Working group on

Good corporate governance

To put our values into action, we encourage, inspire and support all our employees to be people and planet conscious in everything they do and expect the leaders of Sunrock to lead by example. This way, we mean to inspire other companies in the solar industry to invest in ESG principles. For us, making and maintaining ESG part of Sunrock’s DNA involves taking actions and investing resources. In other words: we make it happen.

The Steering Committee ensures company-wide commitment to ESG targets, monitors progress, allocates resources, and resolves issues impeding action realization.