Eco-Efficient Operations

Most of our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are from office activity, mobile combustion (e.g., claim vehicles, commuting) and business travel. While we strive to reduce our emissions, our primary climate-related risks and opportunities relate to our property insurance business and claim service, which we cover in the Climate Strategy, Disaster Preparedness & Response and Public Policy sections of this site.

Our Chief Administrative Officer – a member of the company’s Management and Operating Committees – oversees office activity, mobile combustion and business travel enterprisewide with the help of the Corporate Real Estate and Procurement teams. These teams regularly monitor and analyze our operations and facilities to identify ways for us to operate more efficiently, reduce our environmental impact and lower our operating expenses. We prioritize projects based on their expected financial impact, so our efforts to reduce our energy consumption and waste not only reduce our environmental impact but also lower our operating expenses. Our GHG Inventory & Goals page summarizes our progress to reduce direct and indirect GHG emissions and references our new goal of becoming carbon neutral across our owned operations by 2030.

Although 2020 was an unusual year with respect to our office activity, mobile combustion and business travel, we continue to work on reducing our environmental impact. Our new open workspace environment reduces our footprint and incorporates enhanced technology, including remote collaboration tools and video-enabled conference rooms, to reduce nonessential business travel. In addition, we provide incentives to our employees to use mass transit alternatives and offer parking incentives for carpoolers.

In 2019, we also began to reduce our environmental impact by encouraging our personal insurance customers to convert to paperless billing. We committed to fund the planting of a tree for every paperless billing conversion in Personal Insurance. In April 2020, we met our goal to plant a million trees through this campaign, and we subsequently committed to fund the planting of an additional 500,000 trees by Earth Day 2021. These goals are just one example of our commitment to aggressively seek ways to create shared value – in other words, ways to simultaneously protect our environment, create a streamlined experience for our customers and increase shareholder value.

As outlined in our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics, it is the company’s policy to comply with all applicable laws, rules and regulations; this includes all relevant environmental regulations. The Travelers Environmental Policy, approved by senior management, outlines some of the steps we take to operate more efficiently and in an environmentally conscious manner, including:

• Continuously reviewing our equipment and technology, installing more efficient versions when appropriate.
• Conducting assessments with utility providers to better understand and manage our energy usage.
• Monitoring waste output to ensure we recycle as much as possible.

In addition, all Travelers-owned campuses are ENERGY STAR® certified, which means that we are in the top quartile in terms of energy performance standards and undergo an annual recertification process.

Travelers continues to analyze the company’s operational impacts on the environment and works to minimize negative impacts. We utilize an environmental management system that regularly reviews our operations to measure our impacts and to identify opportunities that increase efficiency and reduce costs.

Some of the key elements of our environmental management system include:

• Periodic recommissioning of facilities.
• Evaluating emerging technologies, such as alternative energy, and their potential use in our facilities.
• Partnering with power and other utility providers to review our operations and, when available, leveraging their incentive programs to help fund our improvements.
• Evaluating potential changes to energy regulations that may impact our costs and operations.
• Using technology to fine-tune operational parameters.
• With respect to waste, minimizing and recycling as much waste as possible.
• Evaluating how to be more efficient in space utilization, which has led to the introduction of a new open workspace environment that is designed to increase operational efficiency and decrease our need for office space, which will further minimize our impact on the environment.

Our Corporate Real Estate team conducts ongoing facilities assessments at all our owned locations. We also take these assessments into account when developing our capital expenditure plan. For example, we are upgrading all lighting in our Travelers-owned Hartford campus to LED fixtures to reduce our utility consumption, extend the asset life of our lights and provide an enhanced environment for Travelers employees.

As stated in our Supplier Code of Conduct, we expect our suppliers to comply with applicable environmental laws and to work to minimize any negative environmental impact from their operations, including by reducing or mitigating emissions, increasing sustainable use of natural resources and reducing or eliminating waste. Our Procurement team also oversees our comprehensive supplier selection and supply chain management processes, including the review of climate and environmental considerations, where appropriate. In our supplier selection process, Procurement evaluates potential suppliers using the following information, as appropriate:

• Detailed information about the supplier’s sustainability programs.
• Sustainability attributes specific to the supplier’s products or services.
• Results achieved from the supplier’s sustainability programs.
• Independent audit and/or certification of the supplier’s sustainability practices.

Post-selection, Travelers uses a risk-based approach to monitor news alerts for certain suppliers, which includes monitoring for negative news relating to the supplier’s environmental issues and ethical practices.

Travelers set a goal to reduce the company’s absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 40% by 2020, based on a 2011 base year. As of the end of 2020, we have exceeded this goal, and in April 2021, we announced our commitment to become carbon neutral across our owned operations by 2030.

In recent years, we have implemented various emissions reduction initiatives, including:

• Lighting. We have spent millions of dollars on interior renovations at our Travelers-owned Hartford campus to upgrade our lights to LED and continue to work with local utility companies to understand the incentives for which Travelers could qualify.
• Information Technology (IT) Equipment Upgrades. We implement ongoing upgrades to more energy-efficient IT equipment in our data centers. We typically upgrade this equipment every three years.
• Building Fabric Maintenance Program. Targeting windows and roofs, we have a comprehensive preventive maintenance and repair program to ensure building integrity and reduce energy loss. This program for building fabric will be ongoing for the life of each building.
• Cloud Migration. We are working toward using more cloud storage solutions to reduce our dependence on data centers, and thereby reduce our carbon footprint, over time.
• Efficient Fleet Vehicles. We partner with car manufacturing companies to continue transitioning our fleet to more environmentally efficient vehicles/engines.

As illustrated in the table below, between 2011 and 2020, we made significant progress in reducing our carbon footprint, cutting absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 54%. The Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions data in the table below have been verified by an independent third party.

* Location-based method.

As with energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, we see many opportunities to align our long-term financial interests with responsible water use and waste disposal, creating shared value for our shareholders and the environment. Travelers monitors waste disposal efforts and water usage across the company’s operations and has implemented certain practices to help ensure proper waste handling and water use. Specifically, we:

• Employ a third-party vendor to properly recycle and dispose of obsolete IT equipment.
• Shred and recycle paper at all locations.
• Installed automatic shut-offs on most faucets.
• Are installing water bottle filling stations in all new workspaces to reduce the use and disposal of single-use water bottles.
• Have a bottle and can recycling program at all owned locations.

We measure and track all waste at our owned facilities, including single-stream recycling, municipal solid waste and construction/demolition waste. Furthermore, we now track all water and sewer use, including general water use for restrooms, kitchens and landscape-related irrigation. With these tracking capabilities, we are able to monitor our waste/water consumption trends over time and quantify impacts of building improvements as they relate to creating more environmentally sustainable workplaces.