Environmental risks

This area includes two types of risks:

• the risks that external environmental conditions can pose for business continuity (for example, earthquakes can destroy telephone exchanges, the depletion of energy resources can create unsustainable costs for the Company etc.). These include risks determined by climate change, such as flooding caused by rising oceans and precipitation or increasing energy costs caused by rising temperatures;
• potential damage caused to the environment by the Company’s activities. 

The first type of risks, which is a threat to the operation of the company, is considered and monitored carefully by means of appropriateBusiness Continuity strategies and procedures (see The business continuity management system section of this chapter).

As regards the potential environmental damage caused by the Company, the delivery of telecommunications services does not pose serious risks, other than those associated with the supply chain:

• the indirect risks arising from energy use - as TIM is not an energy producer, the only mitigation tools available to the Company are to optimise its energy consumption (discussed in the chapter Safeguarding the Environment) and to select suppliers (discussed in the Digitisation, connectivity and social innovation//Suppliers chapter);
• the “sourcing” of these technologies, i.e. the purchase of technological products, the production of which can cause serious environmental damage, and the disposal of technological waste (by the Company’s suppliers). These aspects are governed by the Group Green Procurement policy available at www.telecomitalia.com and by the sustainable supply chain management system described in the Digitisation, connectivity and social innovation/Suppliers chapter of this report.

TIM monitors the aforementioned types of risk using the tools it considers most appropriate for each type, briefly described in the Environmental Protection,Digitisation, connectivity and social innovation/Suppliers, People in TIM chapters and in the Human Rights paragraph of this chapter. Precise targets have only been set for the types of risk for which these targets may actually be useful. In particular, targets have been set for:

• new generation network coverage;
• supplier sustainability;
• reducing energy consumption.

(see Digitisation, connectivity and social innovation/Suppliers and Appendix).