Climate and Energy

Global Highlights

• As of the end of fiscal 2021, we have reached a 32% reduction in GHG emissions from our direct operations against fiscal 2017.
• We experienced an 18.5% decrease in our absolute market-based GHG emissions relative to FY20 and over two-thirds of this is attributable to COVID-19 related store closures.
• This decrease occurred despite growth in selling square footage (including new stores in our T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, HomeGoods, Sierra, Winners, Homesense, and T.K. Maxx retail chains).
• Carbon Reductions: Together energy management and renewable and low carbon efforts resulted in a reduction of over 154,000 metric tons of CO₂e from our operations saving an estimated $1.7 million.
• About 26%, or over 400 million kilowatt hours, of our global electricity use comes from renewable or low-carbon energy sources.
• In comparison to fiscal 2020, TJX renewable energy sourcing increased by 15%.
• TJX purchased 29,000 megawatt hours more renewable and low-carbon energy including renewable energy certificates (RECs), onsite solar power purchase agreements (PPAs), and utility-supplied renewable energy in fiscal 2021 than in fiscal 2020. We estimate that the incremental increase in renewable purchases decreased metric tons of CO₂e by 2.3%, approximately 15,400 metric tons of CO₂e.

U.S. Highlights:

Renewable and low-carbon energy:

• In the U.S., distribution centers in Arizona, Connecticut, and Nevada and select stores in New Jersey, Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, and California have installed solar panels, resulting in an estimated $640,000 savings each year. These projects are on buildings we own or where market conditions and landlord partnerships enable projects. In fiscal 2021, we completed the installation of a solar array on the rooftop of our Worcester, MA, distribution center. The array is expected to provide about 29% of the building’s electricity needs and save over $90k annually in expense.

Canada Highlights:

• TJX Canada was carbon neutral for its Scope 1 and 2 and reported Scope 3 (business travel and waste) emissions from operations for its third consecutive year. The regional team reduced energy usage and purchased renewable energy credits as well as carbon offsets to support this strategy.
• Through its regional energy and climate strategy, TJX Canada avoided or offset over 35,500 metric tons of CO₂e calculated for its fiscal 2021 GHG inventory. This has the estimated environmental impact of taking over 7,700 cars off the road for a year or the estimated carbon stored by over 43,000 acres of trees.

Here’s how TJX Canada achieved these results:

• Conserving Energy: In fiscal 2021, TJX Canada continued to implement technologies, like LED lighting and HVAC replacements, which reduced our GHG inventory by over 739,000 kilowatt hours.
• Renewable Energy: TJX Canada has purchased wind energy since fiscal 2017, which reduces its annual Scope 2 market-based emissions by about 83% annually and its total market-based emissions by about 47%.
• Carbon Offsets: Remaining emissions (about 53%) use carbon offsets sourced from ecosphere+ and its Nii Kaniti Community Forest Management Project in Peru. The Nii Kaniti project works with seven indigenous communities to conserve 119,837 hectares of threatened forest in the Peruvian Amazon through scaling up sustainable community forest management. It integrates conservation activities that value indigenous-led development with FSC-certified timber extraction, cacao agroforestry, and non-timber forest products, such as handcrafts or rubber-biotextiles.
• For the fiscal 2021 GHG inventory, TJX Canada purchased carbon offsets to cover its Scope 1 and certain Scope 3 emissions (from business travel and waste), as well as Scope 2 emissions not covered by renewable energy purchases.³ For our offset purchase, we chose a Verified Carbon Standard (VCS)-certified⁴ project focused on forest conservation.

Europe Highlights:

• In fiscal 2021, TJX Europe joined the British Retail Consortium (BRC) Climate Action Roadmap, which includes the ambition of reducing the impact of retail on the environment. The goal of the Roadmap is to set out how the retail industry can work together with its partners and supply chains to become a net zero industry by 2040.
• Through its regional climate and energy strategy, TJX Europe avoided more than 41,000 metric tons of CO₂e calculated for its fiscal 2021 GHG inventory. This has the estimated environmental impact of taking over 9,000 cars off the road for a year or the estimated carbon stored by over 51,000 acres of trees.

Here’s how TJX Europe achieved these results:

Conserving Energy:

• Installing LED lighting in new and remodeled stores and processing centers. In fiscal 2021, LED lighting was installed across 32 stores in the U.K. resulting in a savings of 37% and more than 1.6 million kilowatt hours. We also opened eight new stores with LED technology.
• Continuing to retrofit our stores with energy-efficient equipment, such as HVAC with CO₂ sensors that automatically adjust based on store occupancy levels or back room sensors that only heat or cool a room that is occupied.

Renewable Energy:

• TJX Europe expanded its renewable energy sourcing strategy to include the U.K. operations and purchased an additional 90 million kilowatt hours of energy made from renewable sources in fiscal 2021 compared to fiscal 2020.
• Together with the renewable energy sourced for our Ireland operations, TJX Europe helped reduce TJX’s global corporate market-based GHG inventory by over 34,000 metric tons of CO₂e.
• Our processing centers in Bergheim, Germany and Wroclaw, Poland utilize onsite energy generated through solar and geothermal technologies.

Operations teams in each of our geographies proactively work to reduce our energy and fuel consumption. These efforts help us do our part in contributing to a solution to help limit global warming. These teams manage our energy consumption and costs, analyze and improve our operational performance, and test, prioritize, and implement energy efficiency technologies in the facilities and vehicles we operate. These efforts play a key part in the implementation of our long-term science-based GHG emissions reduction target.

Our regional Energy Management teams work with the goal of reducing energy and electricity-related emissions with these key strategies:

• Exploring new technologies to optimize access to and analysis of our energy data, which could enable swifter resolution of maintenance or operational issues and further increase our efficiency.
• Identifying new applications of light-emitting diode (LED) technologies and installing LED light fixtures in most areas of our new stores – from the backroom to the fitting rooms to the jewelry cases.
• Retrofitting lighting and HVAC systems in existing stores and distribution centers in certain geographies.
• Leading programs which identify stores that are operating outside of our standards for efficiency and working with them to optimize lighting, electrical, and mechanical systems.
• Evaluating new technologies, such as battery energy storage and demand-control ventilation for HVAC, that may be applicable across certain facility types.
• Exploring and leveraging utility level incentives and programs.

We also work to reduce and conserve fuels in our fleet vehicles and in those areas where we directly manage our logistics and distribution, like in the U.K. and Ireland outbound store deliveries. These emissions are part of our direct operations (Scope 1 emissions), and are reported in our corporate carbon footprint. These also fall within the scope of our global corporate science-based GHG emissions reduction target. Together with our partners, we continually work on new ideas to increase fuel efficiency and reduce costs, with the goal of decreasing the impact of our vehicles on the environment. Our key strategies for reducing these emissions include:

• Utilizing hybrid cars for a portion of the U.S. fleet vehicles.

In the U.K. and Ireland, we:

• Incorporated a "green" clause in our logistics agreements, which covers both trucking and store delivery vehicles and commits both parties to achieving key environmental goals.
• Increased the use of both our longer-semi trailers and our Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) tractor units, resulting in carbon emissions reductions of approximately 156 metric tons per year. Additionally, we are exploring the use of bio-methane gas in our LNG trucks, which would increase the carbon savings by an additional 80% annually.
• Support ongoing initiatives including the implementation of fleet analytics and tire pressure monitoring to deliver incremental fuel efficiency.
• Regularly review our delivery schedules to reduce miles traveled, implementing measures such as reducing empty running, combining store deliveries, and maximizing vehicle sizes.

See below for more details on our transportation and logistics efforts.

We source low-carbon and renewable energy to further reduce our GHG emissions from electricity consumption. In certain geographies, we leverage carbon offsets⁵ to offset emissions resulting from our direct operations and business travel.

Renewable and Low-Carbon Energy

As a global company, we operate in many different energy and renewables markets. Opportunities for sourcing renewable energy vary greatly from country to country and even within regions. As we typically do not build or own our stores, our onsite, renewable electricity-generation opportunities are limited. Therefore, we continue to evaluate alternative energy solutions and purchasing opportunities for facilities that we own, taking into account the economic and operational feasibility of specific projects. Some examples of our current sourcing strategies include:

• Wholesale power purchase agreements
• On-site power purchase agreements
• Electricity supply contracts
• Renewable energy credits

In fiscal 2021, we sourced over 325 million kilowatt hours of renewable energy in total, generated from a variety of technologies. Together, our renewable and low-carbon energy sourcing strategy in fiscal 2021 enabled us to reduce our Scope 2 market-based GHG inventory by more than 146,000 metric tons of CO₂e, or by about 25% over the prior year.

While our focus has historically been on the climate-related impact of our direct operations where we have the most control over our facilities energy and fuel usage, we acknowledge there are climate-related impacts present in retail supply chains. To better understand those impacts, we are working to estimate those emissions from certain Scope 3 sources in our supply chain and assess the feasibility of setting a science-based emissions reduction target related to Scope 3 emissions.

The majority of TJX’s climate impact from transportation and logistics come from the use of energy and fuels used by transportation and distribution carriers who move merchandise from our vendors to our stores. These emissions are considered part of our Scope 3 emissions footprint and we annually estimate and share the data internally to help us better understand the climate-related impact of certain aspects our supply chain.

Our logistics teams worldwide seek out strategies and technology solutions that can help us increase the efficiency of our transportation operations. We strive to conserve fuel, reduce travel time, and decrease the number of trucks on the road. We use a variety of strategies and technologies to support this goal, for example, using modeling software to improve the efficiency of our store delivery network, increasing utilization of trailer space, and testing new alternative fuel vehicles. Additionally, we work with transport partners through programs like SmartWay in the U.S. and FleetSmart in Canada.

In the U.S.:

• In addition to using intermodal,⁶ we have opened service centers that are smaller than distribution centers. They are located closer to store “clusters” and designed to improve the efficiency of our store delivery process. We also utilize these service centers to co-locate our Asset Recovery and Recycling Centers (ARRCs) and maximize our delivery trucks’ utilization by backhauling re-usable and recyclable materials. Learn more about our ARRCs on the Waste Management page.
• We work with a transport carrier to operate compressed natural gas trucks. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that these trucks produce about 22% less CO2 per mile than diesel trucks. We are pleased with the success of this program and continue to test other efficient methods of delivering merchandise to our stores.
• We are a member of the EPA’s SmartWay Transport Partnership. This program is a collaborative effort between shippers, truckers, and the EPA to find innovative ways to reduce both fuel consumption and GHG emissions. As a SmartWay shipper, TJX is committed to using SmartWay-certified transport carriers and require that new U.S. carriers are SmartWay-certified. In fiscal 2020, the most recent data available, 100% of TJX's U.S. land transportation mileage was with SmartWay-certified carriers.

 

In Canada:

• Since fiscal 2017, a significant portion of our carriers are FleetSmart-approved. (FleetSmart is the Canadian equivalent of the U.S. SmartWay program.)
• Since fiscal 2017, we have worked with a third-party distribution center in Delta, British Columbia to support stores in western Canada to substantially reduce the miles needed to ship products to our stores. In fact, we estimate that we have reduced shipping by over 1.3 million miles per year.

In Europe:

• In the U.K. and Ireland, we work to reduce and conserve fuels in our owned fleet vehicles, and our logistics partners in Europe are committed to meeting annual targets.

As we construct new buildings, we incorporate environmentally sustainable features when feasible. For example, our newly constructed distribution centers and processing centers are built to enable the addition of onsite solar arrays and we consistently evaluate the potential to add these alternative forms of energy to our energy portfolio. Furthermore, when we move into existing properties, as part of the renovation process, our design teams typically consider ways to improve energy efficiency and water conservation and to develop recycling infrastructure where feasible. See a global list of environmentally sustainable building projects.

Throughout much of TJX Canada’s regional headquarters, environmentally sustainable features are incorporated, including Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-certified, reclaimed wood, low or no volatile organic compound paints and flooring, and other sustainable materials in the interior finishes, workstations, outdoor areas, and cafeteria. We have special hybrid and electric vehicle charging stations and a vegetable and herb garden that is managed by Associates, which was put on hold when the office was closed due to the pandemic. We purchased renewable energy credits to offset the electricity carbon footprint for this building.

For our new European headquarters, of which the first phase opened in fiscal 2020, we achieved an “Excellent” BREEAM certification (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method, an environmental assessment method and rating system for buildings) for the design based on the building’s environmental sustainability credentials. We chose building materials with low embodied carbon emissions and are working with lumber companies that meet environmental standards to help promote responsible forestry. Additionally, we have updated fixtures in our bathrooms to help use less water. We are also installing beehives on the roof of our offices in fiscal 2022, as well as native landscaping to support improving biodiversity in the local area.