Ingolstadt
Audi Sustainability Report 2019 – Progress you can feel
No future viability without sustainability
When the Audi Sustainability Report 2019 was kicked off last September, it was impossible to foresee many of the things that have happened since then. From the global changes and challenges posed by COVID-19 to Volkswagen AG’s plans to acquire the publicly traded 0.36 percent of Audi shares through a stock-corporation-law squeeze out: Nobody anticipated just how turbulent 2020 would begin.
Meanwhile, we have spent a good eight months developing the Sustainability Report 2019 under the direction of Dr. Stefanie Augustine. Despite all the events that have unfolded, our goal was always to publish the report in mid-May in order to present information about the sustainability activities of AUDI AG to all our stakeholders in the second quarter – as we usually do. The report being published today represents the results of coordinated efforts in seven management areas, involving more than 70 different people.
“Throughout the project, it was important to us all to retain our usual publication period. A look at positive developments is always worthwhile – especially in difficult times. We want to use our report to explain last year’s sustainability activities to our stakeholders, but we also want to provide a systematic outlook on our company’s ongoing commitment to sustainability in the coming years. All of this serves as proof of our viability, or in other words, our sustainability.“
– Prof. Dr. Tropschuh, Head of the Sustainability Strategy department at Audi
Virtual journey through the sustainable realm of AUDI AG
The Audi Sustainability Report 2019 is structurally similar to reports in previous years, with the basic chapters “Strategy,” “Operations and Integrity,” “Products and Services,” “Value Creation and Production” and “Employees and Society.” Maintaining the same structure makes it easier to compare our sustainability performance across multiple years and identify progress.
A new feature compared with sustainability reports from the past is the even more transparent selection and presentation of the topics discussed in this report. For instance, the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations (SDGs) and the Guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) were considered just as much as our internal strategies or the results of the 2019 materiality analysis. The detailed result of this topic selection can be seen in a new interactive format on page 14 of the report in combination with the outcome of the materiality analysis on page 23.
“We want to address all our stakeholder groups with this report. That’s why it was important to us to achieve the utmost transparency and clarity when selecting topics for the report and deciding on the overall structure. That way, all it takes is a few clicks for people to reach the articles that are relevant to them,” says Dr. Stefanie Augustine.
With this new approach, the company is demonstrating its adaptability and openness: It is important to Audi to relay clear messages and demonstrate credibility through transparency.
This report is published in German and English, and is available starting May 14, 2020 for download as a PDF. We wish you an enjoyable virtual journey through the sustainable realm of AUDI AG.
