Sustainability Strategy

Our sustainability strategy is embedded in our business plan and consistent with our aim to deliver Great Products, a Strong Business and a Better World. At Ford, we define sustainability as a business model that creates value consistent with the long-term preservation and enhancement of environmental, social and financial capital.

For more than a dozen years, we have built our sustainability strategy on a foundation of transparency, accountability and stakeholder engagement. Back in 2000, we convened a diverse group of stakeholders to advise our Company on sustainability issues that should be the focus of our strategy. From that consultation came a series of initiatives on the issues of climate change and human rights. Over the years, we continued to reach out to stakeholders to engage on key issues and, in the mid-2000s, formalized our issue-identification process through a materiality analysis that assesses the importance of a range of sustainability issues to stakeholders and the Company. Our public reporting has been an important part of our commitment to transparency and has helped to drive progress in our Company and across the industry.

We have a dedicated department, called Sustainability & Vehicle Environmental Matters, which oversees sustainability strategy development and implementation by identifying emerging challenges and opportunities and mobilizing resources within the Company to address them. Our philosophy is that sustainability issues should be integrated into business processes and managed by the business functions, just like we do for other key business issues. For example, our work on human rights and environmental sustainability in the supply chain is managed by our Procurement division and forms an important theme in our ongoing partnerships with our suppliers.

Our business units have set a series of goals and targets related to sustainability. Our Manufacturing function, for example, develops a yearly scorecard that impacts performance evaluation and compensation for all managers who work in manufacturing. These targets cover performance areas such as safety, energy and water use, and emissions reductions. Our climate change strategy is guided by a cross-functional team called Sustainable Mobility Governance. This team has identified goals including our pledge that all of our vehicles will be best in class (or among the best in class) in fuel economy, along with a long-term goal to contribute to climate stabilization, as discussed in the Climate Change section. Our sustainability strategy, and the pursuit of our related goals, have enhanced our reputation and contributed to the competitiveness of our products, operations and workforce, helping us build social, environmental and financial value.