As background information, the Environmental Protection Agency developed a system to track different types of greenhouse emissions, which are attributed to climate change. They are Scope 1, 2 and 3. Scope 1 includes direct emissions, or sources of greenhouses gases that Caesars owns, like non-electric vehicles. Scope 2 includes indirect emissions, or sources of greenhouse gases that Caesars purchases, like electricity from utility companies. Scope 3 are emissions generated by other companies that are part of the Caesars’ supply chain, like food producers or linen suppliers.
Progress on our environmental goals is reported annually in our Corporate Social Responsibility report.
Established with a baseline year of 2007 for environmental targets and 2011 for our science-based goals, CodeGreen now encompasses additional elements of our corporate responsibility strategy for a comprehensive approach and includes community involvement and engagement of our colleagues at many different levels, both at work and at home.
CodeGreen at Home incentivizes team members to practice the same environmentally responsible actions at home as we encourage in our operations. Each quarter, hundreds of team members submit applications that demonstrate completion of approved actions such as switching to eco-conscious transportation, converting to native landscape, composting installing Energy Star certified appliances and more. Last year, our team members made huge environmental impacts by reducing their use of water, gas and energy in their personal environments. More than 1,000 team members have adopted this benefit.
Environmental opportunities, risks and programs are managed strategically within several departments, including Corporate Social Responsibility and Facilities & Engineering, which includes Sustainable Operations, Enterprise Risk Management and Government Relations. Executive Vice President of Public Policy & Corporate Responsibility, Jan Jones Blackhurst, oversees government relations, corporate communications, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and environmental sustainability for the company. Along with internal environmental leadership commitments, Caesars also draws upon external expertise, including its Sustainability External Advisory Board and nonprofit partners like the World Resources Institute.
The Facilities & Engineering group conducts on-site property audits quarterly to identify environmental risks and opportunities at the specific asset/property level. Caesars’ Sustainable Operations group works with the Risk Management and the Facilities & Engineering groups to further identify climate-related risks and opportunities. The Risk Assessment methodologies, as well as the on-site audits, embody the Caesars Code of Commitment and identify risks and opportunities that potentially impact our fundamental commitment to our guests, our employees, environmental stewardship and our local communities.
A robust set of environmental metrics including energy and water consumption, waste diversion and greenhouse gas emissions from our locations across North America, are tracked in a company scorecard and results are reported to the senior management team. These metrics are utilized to guide continuous improvement programs and impact reduction at the properties. Additionally, these environmental metrics are used by the executive capital committee for review and approval of capital expenditures related to energy efficiency projects and sustainability initiatives.
As part of our CodeGreen strategy, we undertook an effort to follow green building practices outlined in the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED requirements. Our first LEED certified building was the Octavius Convention Center at Caesars Palace in 2009.
CAESARS FORUM, scheduled to open in early 2020, will conform to the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Standards. It will be the sixth major new construction project to be built to LEED standards and the third LEED-compliant major meetings and convention space owned and operated by Caesars. Beyond our commitment relating to new construction, we have applied LEED Standards across a further 13 existing properties, which, although not formally certified, meet Gold or Silver LEED standards in almost all respects. We continue to look for opportunities to apply the highest standards of green and sustainable construction across our existing and new properties.
Our 10th annual CSR Report is written in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards, core option. The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines represent the most widely-used corporate citizenship and sustainability reporting framework in the world today. GRI principles have informed our reporting approach: materiality (the issues relevant to our most significant impacts and which are of most importance to stakeholders), stakeholder inclusiveness (responding to stakeholder expectations and interests), sustainability context (presenting our performance in the wider context of sustainability issues) and completeness (inclusion of all the information which reflects significant economic impacts to enable stakeholders to assess our performance).
POINT380 verification has been conducted in accordance with ISO 14064–3 Specification with guidance for validation and verification of greenhouse gas assertions and (2) GRI’s G4 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines. The verification has been conducted to achieve a limited level of assurance. Given the status of Caesars’ GHG emissions and water consumption data and management system, a limited level of assurance verification was appropriate for this project.
Our material impacts were defined in 2013 following extensive dialogue with primary stakeholders, and were revised in 2015 in consultation with our External Advisory Board. In 2018, we reviewed these issues internally and agreed that they remain relevant in this reporting period.
The CDP, formerly Carbon Disclosure Project, is the world’s leading initiative to tackle climate change by helping organizations drive down GHG emissions, and water consumption and mitigate environmental risk in their supply chains. By disclosing our performance to the CDP, we join the ranks of the world’s leading companies who are serious about environmental stewardship.
