STMicroelectronics, one of the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturers and a long-time leading proponent of sustainable development with a big facility in Malta, has been named at the top of the Best Management Practices category and ranked among the Top Ten Companies of the Decade in the inaugural Low Carbon Leader Awards presented by The Climate Group and published with a recent survey on greenhouse gas emissions by BusinessWeek last month.

The Climate Group and BusinessWeek have recognised and acknowledged ST’s best-in-class management practices, initiated by ST’s former CEO and honorary chairman Pasquale Pistorio, and carried on by the company’s current CEO, Carlo Bozotti.

Pistorio, who believed environmental initiatives in making chips should come from the top, issued ST’s Environmental Decalogue with measurable, time-defined goals for environmental performance in 1995. With its aggressive Carbon Roadmap as a top executive priority, ST has succeeded in reducing its CO² emissions by 50 per cent over the past 10 years, targeting carbon neutrality and total accumulated energy savings of $900 million by 2010. Last year alone, the company saved $173 million in energy, water, and chemical costs, relative to its 1994 per-unit benchmarks.

Apart from reducing total emissions of CO² by at least five per cent per year, ST’s carbon neutrality programmes include aggressively trimming emissions of perfluorinated compounds, adoption of renewable energy sources, such as wind and water, and reforestation as a means of compensating for the remaining CO² emissions.

The jury has also rated ST’s honorary chairman Pasquale Pistorio as one of the most influential individual achievers in the fight against global warming.