Thales accelerates supply chain decarbonization with Sweep and Capgemini Invent

Background

Thales (Euronext Paris: HO) is a global leader in advanced technologies for the Defence, Aerospace, and Cyber & Digital sectors. Its portfolio of innovative products and services addresses several major challenges: sovereignty, security, sustainability and inclusion.

The Group invests more than €4 billion per year in Research & Development in key areas, particularly for critical environments, such as Artificial Intelligence, cybersecurity, quantum and cloud technologies.

Thales has more than 83,000 employees in 68 countries. In 2024, the Group generated sales of €20.6 billion.

For more than 20 years, Thales has pursued a robust corporate social responsibility (CSR) policy based on the highest international standards. The principles behind this policy are now captured in the company’s purpose of “building a future we can all trust”, which was adopted in 2020.

By the year 2024, Thales had achieved significant decarbonization reductions:

• 56.8% reduction in scope 1 and 2 emissions (vs. 2018)
• 24.7% reduction in scope 3 emissions (vs. 2018)
• 72% of Thales’ energy mix from renewables; 90% of electricity from renewables

Thales is strongly committed to a more sustainable aerospace industry with a clear ambition, in line with the Paris Agreement and certified by the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi): to reduce Scope 3 emissions by 15% by 2030.

Challenge

To meet its ambitious Scope 3 emissions reductions goal, Thales needed robust methods to enable it to collect emissions data from its worldwide supplier network, and refine its carbon footprint calculations.

Given the scale of the challenge, traditional manual data collection and management methods such as spreadsheets were unsuitable, being time-consuming, cumbersome, resource-intensive and open to manual input errors.

Thales also needed to ensure it integrated the new methods effectively into its complex organization, in order to ensure cohesive data management across teams.

Furthermore, the company faced the challenge of monitoring the progress it was making towards its action plans, so that the effectiveness of carbon reduction initiatives could be measured and, where necessary, adjusted. 

Solution

Thales turned to the team of Sweep and Capgemini Invent.
Thales Procurement will leverage Sweep’s market-leading software to gather emissions data from its thousands of suppliers, who are based all around the world.

Sweep’s advanced data management features will helpThales improve the accuracy of its carbon footprint calculations, by simplifying supplier data collection, increasing the use of activity-based emissions over spend-based estimates, and enabling more frequent data updates through its collaborative tools.

Meanwhile Capgemini Invent’s specialist consultants will facilitate the integration of the software into existing systems and processes, ensuring strong governance foundations to support Thales’ sustainability management programs in the face of an evolving data picture, and regulatory environment. 

Capgemini Invent will also play the crucial role of helping Thales to track its progress against existing action plans with the company’s top-emitting suppliers.

This structured approach is intended not only to ensure accountability and transparency throughout the supply chain, but also to enable Thales to monitor carbon emissions reduction efforts, identify areas for improvement, and demonstrate tangible reductions in emissions over time.