Building a World Class ESG Strategy

Lindsey Wiedmann

Chief Legal & Sustainability Officer

When I became Executive Sponsor of the ESG program at Maxeon, my vision was for the Company to be an industry leader in sustainability. This was an audacious goal to set, but an important one given Maxeon’s mission of Powering Positive Change.

Building a sustainability program is very much a journey, with obstacles encountered along the way. It is for this reason, that we must celebrate our successes. To that end, I am very proud of what we have achieved so far, as most recently exemplified by Maxeon’s recognition in the top 1% of the world’s most sustainable companies by the prestigious Corporate Knights rankings following just our second full year as an independent company. The Global 100 ranking factors into 25 quantitative indicators, ranging from sustainability and natural resource management to employee management, financial metrics and supplier performance.

I am delighted to be in a position to share some of our key initiatives that led us to our becoming an industry leader so soon in our existence, as one of three solar companies listed in the top 100 companies and the only one headquartered in Asia.

Holding Ourselves to a Higher Standard

In the wake of the Paris agreement, we committed to a structural way of measuring our sustainability performance according to all leading international standards. In June 2021, we launched our first ever Sustainability Report in which we voluntarily aligned our reporting to four international standards: Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (“SASB”): Solar Technology Project Developers Standard; Global Reporting Initiative (“GRI”) Sustainability Reporting Standards: Core option; Singapore Exchange ("SGX") Sustainability Reporting requirement; United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (“UN SDGs”).

In our second year, we furthered our commitment to voluntary reporting with a Modern Slavery Statement including the integral details on how we approach the traceability of the raw materials in our products. I am proud that our human rights reporting has won a silver medal for human rights reporting of all companies in Asia at the Asia Sustainability Reporting Awards. 

The above reporting was all done voluntarily as part of our commitment to be a standard setter for sustainability reporting.

We will continue to build upon our program to improve as a company, and we will continue to share our progress with our stakeholders through rigorous reporting going forward. 

We Push the Boundaries

We are proud that Maxeon makes the best solar products in the world and the most sustainable. We don’t rest on our laurels and have continued to the push the boundaries on quality and sustainability. Our circular approach begins with how we source raw materials and ends with how we package our products for our customers, two areas of recent Maxeon initiatives in carbon tracking and reduced packaging, respectively.

Last year, we announced an industry-leading 40-year warranty for our panels, meaning they are warranted to last almost twice as long as other solar companies. We also reached the level of Cradle-to-Cradle Silver certification for our Maxeon 3, Maxeon 5, and Maxeon 6 panels in recognition of the circularity of our products, the highest of solar companies.

We Thrive Together

Maxeon has striven to build and be part of the communities where we operate, which has taken many forms.

As one of our first corporate actions, Maxeon Joined the United Nations Global Compact, a global sustainability initiative with more than 30,000 participants. Maxeon has since taking leadership positions in the Global Compact including having our Chief Financial Officer, Kai Strohbecke, join the CFO Coalition of Leaders of 100 Global CFOs taking leadership in the pursuit of meeting the SDGs.

Maxeon was also one of the 12 inaugural organizational members of the Singapore Low Carbon Network, launched as part of PwC Singapore Asia Pacific Centre for Sustainability Excellence. The network supports the Singapore Green Plan 2030 and aims to bring together organisations across Singapore with ambitions to decarbonize. Maxeon has personnel lecture at Singapore Management University, SGX, and elsewhere on sustainability as part of commitment to sharing best practices. 

Celebrating Our Success

As noted above, we are proud that Corporate Knights has included us in the 2023 Global 100 Index of the most sustainable corporations just after our second full year of operations. We are honoured to join a number of other inspiring organizations recognized for being at the forefront of tackling the global energy and climate crisis.

We see this recognition both as a validation of our current business model and an incentive to go even further. Maxeon supports the clean energy transition by ensuring easy access to highly efficient solar panels which last longer than any other panel in the industry, reducing demand for new materials and avoiding millions of tons of carbon emissions every year.

However, we know that renewable generation still needs to be scaled up significantly to fight climate change and ensure a livable future for all. At Maxeon, we are dedicated to Powering Positive Change; we continue to push the boundaries of innovation in partnership with all our valued stakeholders to leave a positive impact on the communities we work with and the planet.