Environ­men­tal steward­ship

Each day we strive to make progress reducing our dependence on natural resources and operate responsibly in all aspects of our business. In our view, reducing our environmental footprint—and pursuing energy and resource savings in the process—is the right thing to do for our stakeholders and the environment.

Our Real Estate and Corporate Services team manages our environmental stewardship efforts and guides the strategies we utilize to effectively manage our buildings, equipment, and fleet. We report on our environmental efforts to help our stakeholders understand the steps we take and the progress we've made.

We continue to seek investments in facilities, equipment, and company vehicles that are increasingly energy and fuel-efficient to support better environmental outcomes while also reducing the costs that our customers ultimately bear. By taking action to reduce the environmental impact of our business operations, we believe that we can not only be responsible environmental stewards, but also create sustainable business value and enhance our resilience.

Energy and carbon emissions management

At Progressive, we're working to reduce our carbon emissions through a combination of initiatives, including investments in renewable energy, more energy- and fuel-efficient vehicles, and building infrastructure. Over a decade ago, we embarked on an ambitious journey to reduce energy consumption and maximize the use of our office space. We invested in building automation systems to adjust heating, cooling, and lighting based on occupancy, and replaced building infrastructure with more energy-efficient equipment.

Recently, we've expanded our green energy investments, including purchasing solar panels and green energy. In 2020, we negotiated a renewable energy agreement with a wind farm in Pennsylvania, which currently supplies power for sites served by the PJM wholesale energy exchange (covering several states generally in the eastern region of the U.S.). This agreement has meaningfully reduced our electricity-related carbon emissions by roughly 31,000 metrics tons of CO2e per year.

We also installed a 1.8-megawatt solar panel array at one of our main campus locations in Cleveland, Ohio. We expect it will reduce the site's emissions by 1,500 metric tons per year and help us generate a meaningful return on our investment through energy cost savings over time.

Our renewable energy initiatives and investments in energy- and fuel-efficient facilities, equipment, and company vehicles create shared value for our business and stakeholders, supporting our efforts to reduce carbon emissions and pass along cost savings to our customers.

Our emissions reductions

Our carbon emissions-related initiatives and investments contribute to our continued progress in reducing emissions. In 2021, we achieved a 25% reduction in carbon emissions per million policies in force (PIFs) compared to 2020 levels. While we surpassed our goal of achieving a 68% reduction in carbon emissions per million PIFs compared to 2008 levels by 2022, we recognize that COVID-19 impacts contributed significantly to achieving this milestone. As the return to normalcy occurs, we will continue to evaluate progress against our goal while being mindful of evolving trends. Our focus on increasing efficiencies to reduce emissions and lower operational costs remains unwavering. Recently we expanded upon our vision and announced a goal of carbon neutrality by the end of 2025 for Scopes 1 and 2, which will help set the path to net-zero in the following decade.

Scope 1 and 2 carbon emission 2008 – 2021 [1]

[1] Includes carbon emissions from electricity and natural gas consumption and fuel used by fleet vehicles, company aircraft, and generators. The volume of carbon emissions from these sources has been estimated using actual real estate portfolio information and industry standard calculation methods. Emission factors were adjusted for 2021 calculations to reflect updates to standards. Prior years were not retroactively updated. In 2021 Progressive began purchasing Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) to begin offsetting emissions which has been reflected in the market-based figures. Emissions intensity factors were updated in 2021 to reflect U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) standards and will be reviewed annually as part of Progressive's emissions reporting efforts.

Responsible waste management

We're committed to reducing and responsibly managing waste generated by our operations. To reduce waste we send to landfills, we established robust recycling programs for office paper, cardboard, aluminum cans, and plastic and glass bottles at our campus locations. Approximately 548 tons (26%) of the waste collected at our campuses was diverted from landfills to recycling centers in 2021.

We also recently reduced our use of plastic by eliminating plastic straws and utensils in our Progressive Café campus locations and break areas. We eliminated polystyrene food containers in our Café locations and replaced plastic utensils and polystyrene food packaging with compostable options. Polystyrene materials that could not be easily replaced with a compostable option (primarily IT packaging) are compacted and recycled.

While we typically host annual campaigns for Environmental Awareness Week and America Recycles Day to build awareness among our employees about responsible resource consumption and disposal strategies, we postponed our events in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, these events resumed with a full week of content to celebrate Earth Day, including postings relating to sustainability and environmental awareness resources for employees.

Looking forward

As we look forward to the future, we are excited to continue to be responsible environmental stewards. An important part of our culture is to work toward creating a better future for not only our employees but also for our agents, communities, shareholders, and the millions of customers who trust us to protect what's most important to them. In honoring that commitment, we announced our goal of being carbon neutral (for Scopes 1 and 2 emissions) by the end of 2025, and we are working to chart a course with the goal of being net-zero the following decade.

We expect that Progressive's plan to be net-zero will leverage the continued application of operational efficiencies and ongoing efforts to reduce emission outputs. We plan to continue to expand our virtual-based inspections, including photo estimation, and add more partners to the Shop Written Estimate (SWE) program. We believe this will shift us toward operating our claims estimating process more efficiently.

Learn more about how all our operations live up to our purpose.

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