How Vodafone Group is accelerating its climate transition

By Joakim Reiter, Vodafone Group Chief External & Corporate Affairs Officer

At Vodafone Group, tackling climate change means taking robust action across many parts of our business – from how we power our networks and travel, to how we work with suppliers and help customers reduce their environmental impact.

This year, Vodafone Group made further progress against its climate transition strategy across our markets, focusing on cleaner energy, more efficient networks and a more circular approach to devices and equipment.

Progress towards net zero operations (Scope 1 & 2)

Vodafone Group is committed to reaching net zero across in its own operations (Scope 1 & 2) in Europe by 2028, in Africa by 2035.

In 2025, Vodafone Germany became our first European market to reach net zero emissions from its own operations, after reducing Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 93% since 2020 and neutralising the remaining emissions through investment in carbon dioxide removal projects.

Across the Group, we continue to match 100%[1] of the grid electricity we purchase with renewable sources through power purchase agreements and renewable energy certificates.

Tackling emissions across our value chain

Vodafone Group has set an SBTi‑approved target to reduce emissions across our value chain by 90% by 2040.

As a service provider, 96% of our total emissions sit in our value chain, known as Scope 3 emissions. While these are not directly under our operational control, we know we have an important role to play in tackling them.

This year, we scaled our supplier engagement programme, onboarding 60% of strategic suppliers onto a new platform that helps track and accelerate progress of our suppliers on their climate journey.

We also collaborated with industry partners through initiatives such as the Joint Alliance for Corporate Social Responsibility (JAC), supporting 46 suppliers with determining clear actions to reduce their emissions.

Making our networks smarter and more energy‑efficient

Our networks power millions of connections every day, so improving their energy efficiency can have a real impact.

This year, we continued to reduce energy use across our global network operations by deploying the latest generation of energy‑efficient radio equipment, activating smart power‑saving features and scaling new AI‑enabled tools for energy management.

Together, these improvements help us deliver more reliable connectivity while using less energy.

Supporting the shift to renewable electricity and more flexible power grids

As electricity systems transition away from fossil fuels, flexibility becomes increasingly important.  That’s why Vodafone Group is testing how its infrastructure can support more resilient and sustainable energy systems.

This year, we led a distributed energy storage pilot in the Czech Republic, exploring how large‑scale grid‑connected batteries can help balance supply and demand. We also launched a similar pilot in the UK to understand how battery storage can support a more flexible, low‑carbon grid.

We are also exploring ways to use electricity at times when the grid is most renewable. By adjusting the way we use or store electricity in real-time to match when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining, we can support the transition to a more flexible, digital and renewable electricity system.

Reducing reliance on fossil fuels

In many parts of the world, mobile networks rely on off‑grid power sources. During this year, we continued to reduce fossil fuel use by expanding solar‑powered mobile sites across our markets, generating renewable electricity directly on site.

In South Africa, we operationalised our first ‘virtual wheeling’ project, developed with a local energy utility. The platform allows independent power producers to feed electricity generated from renewable sources into the grid at scale.

We also trialled a hybrid diesel generator control system in Mozambique, designed to reduce diesel consumption during power outages by switching to battery power wherever possible – improving resilience while helping to reduce emissions.

We have also made progress in decarbonising our fleet. Around one quarter of the vehicles purchased and ordered in our fleet across Europe are now electric.

Reducing waste through circularity

A more circular approach to the management of network and device equipment helps reduce waste, conserve resources and cut emissions.  Across our networks, we prioritise reuse and resale of decommissioned network equipment wherever possible.

This year, we generated 7,731 metric tonnes of network equipment e‑waste. In November 2025, we launched a pan-European recycling tender to select an e-waste recycling partner that could support our ambition to minimise waste sent to landfill and incineration by maximising the recovery of materials in the e-waste recycling processes.

For consumer devices, we expanded trade‑in, repair and second‑life programmes, helping customers keep devices in use for longer. Through our partnership with WWF, we were proud to announce in March that we had reached our target to collect one million used mobile devices for reuse, recycling or donation.

For business customer devices, we continued to offer products and services to promote circularity. Our end-to-end Device Lifecycle Management (‘DLM’) service embeds circularity into its core commercial model to simplify device estates, while reducing the environmental footprint of devices over their lifetime. In 2025, we were able to redeploy over 99% of devices returned from the DLM leasing programme.

Building on our achievements and looking ahead

Vodafone Group’s approach to sustainability, climate action and transparency has been recognised again this year.

Vodafone Group was included on CDP’s prestigious ‘A List’ for climate change, reflecting its strong performance on environmental transparency, emissions reduction and climate risk management, based on disclosures through CDP’s annual climate questionnaire.

In parallel, Vodafone also achieved a Platinum medal from EcoVadis for the second year in a row, placing it in the top 1% of all companies assessed globally for sustainability performance across environment, labour and human rights, ethics and sustainable procurement.

We intend to build on this year’s progress as we move towards our ambition to be net zero in our operations.

In Europe, our focus will remain on energy optimisation, using AI and automation to manage energy use more intelligently at scale. In Africa, priorities include phasing out fossil fuels and expanding on‑site renewable energy through partnerships and energy‑as‑a‑service models.

Across our value chain, we will continue to deepen supplier engagement, improve emissions data and scale circular solutions – helping create a more resilient, lower‑carbon future for our business and our customers.

[1] Correct to zero decimal places. Less than 0.2% of grid electricity used by Vodafone Group in FY26 is not matched with renewable sources. This is because in a small number of locations where we operate, there is no available renewable electricity purchasing mechanism and these locations are not grid-connected to any markets where such mechanisms are available.