Carbon & Energy

At Nike, we want to make the world better for all athletes* and that means taking action against climate change. The impact of climate change—including extreme heat, severe storms, sea rise, pollution and drought—is being felt globally. If there is no planet, there is no sport.

We are committed to solving the tough problems to combat climate change which will help ensure athletes* have a world where they can train, live and thrive for generations to come. That’s what Move to Zero is all about, Nike’s journey toward zero carbon and zero waste to help protect the future of sport.

As part of Move to Zero, we have set bold and ambitious targets to reduce our carbon footprint by 2030 through Science-Based Targets, with an absolute reduction of Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 65% and Scope 3 emissions by 30%. In North America, we are now powering our owned or operated facilities with 100% renewable energy. That puts us on track to reach our goal of using 100% renewable energy in owned or operated facilities globally by 2025. We are also catalyzing momentum toward broader adoption of renewable energy in our supply chain.

A major factor in combating climate change is keeping our carbon footprint as small as possible. To this end, we are:

• Innovating and sourcing innovative, lower-impact materials
• Driving more energy efficiency in our operations and within our supply chain
• Increasing renewable energy use throughout our operations and encouraging broader adoption throughout our supply chain
• Collaborating with other organizations (corporate peers, government and NGOs) to scale impact and create better market conditions for clean energy.

The materials we use—from growing crops to dyeing and finishing textiles—have the greatest environmental impact in the entire product lifecycle. Using better, more sustainable materials is an important way that we improve our overall environmental performance.

We use more than 16,000 materials in our products each year; a single pair of shoes can contain up to 30 materials. Our Materials Sustainability Index encourages our product creation teams to choose better materials from vendors by comparing 57,000 materials from over 700 vendors.

We’re also improving the carbon footprint of high-volume materials by using recycled polyester, sourcing more sustainable cotton and using innovative technologies to reduce the amount of water and chemicals used to dye fabrics.

Dyeing and finishing textiles is one of the most energy-intensive processes in our value chain. We work with our dyeing and finishing suppliers to drive energy efficiency by building their organizational capabilities, improving steam boiler systems and implementing best practices for system maintenance. From FY15 to FY20, our focus was on moving our factory partners away from boilers to “electrification.” Now that factories have implemented over 40 boiler projects, we are working on shifting that electrical energy into renewable sources such as solar photovoltaic (PV) systems and, where available, offsite PPAs.

Converting materials into finished products is also energy intensive, particularly for footwear components, such as outsoles. We work with contract factories to identify opportunities to reduce energy use and emissions. We have achieved nearly an 8% reduction in energy consumption per pair since our FY15 baseline at our suppliers’ facilities.

Reducing energy use is just half the story. Our suppliers are also switching to renewable sources of energy that are cleaner than fossil fuels. Our approach to accelerating renewable energy in contract factories has three components:

• Installing solar photovoltaic (solar PV) systems on factory rooftops to provide up to 45 percent of the electricity use of supplier operations.
• Advocating for policies that allow our suppliers to directly source renewable electricity from local power authorities, in addition to bringing together renewable energy developers, contract manufacturers and materials suppliers to invest in on-site renewable energy.
• Expanding our responsibly sourced biomass renewable energy (energy from wood, crop waste or trash) program with a focus on our materials suppliers.

We primarily use ocean shipping to move products from where they are made to where they will be sold. We aim to use as little air freight as possible, given it’s about 25 times more carbon intensive than ocean shipping. We are piloting several initiatives to make shipping more efficient and to reduce our carbon emissions. In 2019 we teamed up with the Ocean Conservancy to establish an Arctic Shipping Pledge, a commitment to not intentionally send ships carrying Nike products through the Arctic out of concern for the negative environmental impact. Initial corporate pledge signatories include Bestseller, Columbia, Gap Inc., H&M Group, Kering, Li & Fung, PVH Corp. and several ocean carriers.

Our owned or operated facilities make up a relatively small portion of our total carbon footprint, but they are where we have the most direct influence and control. One-hundred percent of our North America offices and retail stores are now powered by renewable energy. We are designing our offices and stores to meet LEED standards and have invested heavily in efficient lighting and energy management systems.