MetLife, Inc. received the 2021 ENERGY STAR® Partner of the Year Sustained Excellence Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Energy.
The Sustained Excellence award is the highest honor bestowed by the ENERGY STAR program. It is awarded to ENERGY STAR partners that have made a long-term commitment to fighting climate change and protecting public health through energy efficiency and have demonstrated leadership year over year. This is the third consecutive year that MetLife has been named an ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year, leading to the company’s Sustained Excellence designation.
“At MetLife, environmental stewardship reflects our purpose as a company,” said MetLife Chief Sustainability Officer Jon Richter. “As part of our commitment to building a more confident future, we strive to operate sustainably and support our stakeholders in their efforts to make environmentally sound choices as well. We are proud of this recognition and look forward to continuing our collaboration with the ENERGY STAR program.”
In 2020, MetLife announced 11 new 2030 Environmental Goals aimed at reducing the environmental impact of the company’s global operations and supply chain, while leveraging its investments, products, and services to help protect communities and drive innovative solutions. By continuing to utilize ENERGY STAR resources, MetLife will make progress on its goals, which include reducing location-based greenhouse gas emissions by 30%.
MetLife has achieved ENERGY STAR certifications for 24.5 million square feet of real estate, contributing to reduced energy use and emissions across its portfolio. Of this, 3.5 million square feet is attributed to the corporate office network and 21 million square feet is attributed to portfolios managed by MetLife Investment Management (MIM), MetLife’s institutional asset management platform.
“While the pandemic has created a profound change in the way people work and live, our priorities around building an even more sustainable real estate business have remained the same,” said Robert Merck, global head of Real Estate and Agriculture for MetLife Investment Management. “We have continued to leverage ENERGY STAR’s data and benchmarking platform to devise a specific plan for each property type, which has resulted in meaningful energy reductions.”
These tailored plans include the deployment of MetLife’s MetZero™ program across the company’s MIM-managed real estate portfolio, which is designed to achieve carbon neutrality across the company’s real estate investment portfolios. Using a Carbon Cascade™ approach, MetZero reduces carbon through various programs including energy efficiency, on-site and off-site renewables, and the purchase of renewable energy credits (RECs) and offsets.
Since 2016, MetLife has achieved carbon neutrality annually for its global offices, fleet, and business travel.
Recognition from ENERGY STAR builds on a number of MetLife’s sustainability milestones, including:
- MetLife was the first U.S.-based life insurer to join the U.N. Global Compact, the world’s largest voluntary corporate sustainability initiative.
- MetLife has earned a spot on the Dow Jones Sustainability North America Index for five years in a row.
- MetLife established a Sustainable Financing Framework (SFF), further aligning its business and investment activities to support a more sustainable future. The SFF led to MetLife issuing the U.S. insurance industry’s first “green” funding agreement-backed note, a $750 million issuance.
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