Good afternoon. I'm Yuki Kusumi, Group CEO of Panasonic. Thank you for participating in this online briefing despite your busy schedule. Before I start, I would like to express my sincerest apologies for the inconvenience and concern caused by the leakage of some data due to unauthorized access to our network, as we announced last year. I also apologize for the inconvenience caused by the postponement of this briefing from December 7, 2021. Your understanding is appreciated. The purpose of today's briefing is to share with you our vision, values, and initiatives in conducting sustainable management and, at the same time, aiming to reach and realize a sustainable society. First, my vision on the direction in which Panasonic is to advance.
Looking back on our history, the company's mission announced at the first Foundation Day ceremony in 1932 is to aim to achieve an ideal society with affluence both in matter and mind. After becoming CEO, I have been emphasizing the following message: to carry out this mission, we must be unrivaled in accomplishing valued work that is appreciated by customers and society, that is, to thoroughly enhance competitiveness. The basic business philosophy is the code of conduct to be practiced by each employee in achieving our mission. Let me start this briefing on sustainability by talking about the company's mission and the basic business philosophy from the perspective of sustainability. At the founding ceremony in 1932, which established the company's mission, our founder, Kõnosuke Matsushita, proclaimed that we would achieve an ideal society with affluence both in matter and mind within 250 years.
This very long-range mission of 250 years is designed to help establish a valuable and ideal society over 10 to 25-year phases or 10 generations based on the estimated average working years of an individual. It embodies the founder's wish to pass along the responsibility of fulfilling our true mission to succeeding generations of employees instead of completing it within his own generation. Matsushita added that this is not to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of the next generation. We should enjoy a feeling of well-being in our life, and life must go on while aiming to make things even better for the next generation. An ideal society with affluence both in matter and mind that Panasonic aims for aligns well with this concept of well-being. This long-range mission, to be accomplished over several generations, means that management must be sustainable.
As you can see, Panasonic's mission set all the way back in 1932, about 90 years ago, the early years of the company, already embodied the philosophy of well-being and sustainability, the perspectives I will be talking about today. Let me re-emphasize that the basic business philosophy, which defines our basic way of thinking toward fulfilling our mission, exactly complies with the concept of ESG: Environment, Social, and Governance. First, in terms of environment and social, to be unrivaled in accomplishing valued work in order to achieve an ideal society with affluence both in matter and mind means to be unrivaled in contributing to solving climate change and other global environmental issues and to society. The profit earned as a result should be returned to society and also be invested in efforts to make further contributions.
Moreover, in terms of governance, to sustain contributions toward the environment and society, we will implement autonomous responsible management and employee entrepreneurship, carry out management that maximizes the potential of human resources, promote participatory management, and uphold the principle of fairness and honesty, which embodies compliance. The basic business philosophy guides us in maintaining and enhancing competitiveness that is unrivaled in contributing to the earth and society, with each employee's conduct living up to the highest standard of integrity and further expanding our contributions. It is also the key to the sustainability of the management itself. Now, let me elaborate on how we are to translate our great mission into achieving our goal. In achieving an ideal society without leaving this burden to the next generation, we must tackle various societal issues.
We consider global environmental issues, including climate change, the highest priority that need to be addressed squarely by the Panasonic Group, encompassing all of our businesses. We have already made a commitment to achieving net zero CO2 emissions at all operating companies by 2030 and to make contributions to reducing CO2 beyond the emissions from Panasonic's own value chain by 2050. At the Consumer Electronics Show, CES in the U.S., we announced the Panasonic Green Impact as a way to achieving this goal. With regard to social issues, we believe our targeted affluence, both in matter and mind, should give equal opportunities to gain such affluence to all individuals who live and work in society. We aim to create a state of well-being in which all individuals can feel comfort, safe, healthy in body and mind, and happy wherever they are in lifestyle or work style.
To accomplish all of this, we must support the well-being of our employees as a first step to contributing to the well-being of our customers. I would like to elaborate on our initiatives in addressing global environment and in the three areas of well-being in lifestyle, work style, and employees. This slide shows our environmental initiatives toward achieving a carbon-neutral society and our view and visions. As previously mentioned, we have made a commitment to achieving net zero CO2 emissions at all operating companies, the so-called Scopes 1 and 2, by 2030, shown in dark blue at the upper left part of this graph. To the right, highlighted in light blue, is Scope 3, which are CO2 emissions Panasonic emits through its entire value chain, and they overwhelmingly exceed Scope 1 and Scope 2.
The total amount of all three Scopes is 110 million tons, which is equal to approximately 1% of the total CO2 emissions from global electricity consumption. Panasonic products are used by over 1 million customers worldwide every day. The resulting emissions due to the electricity consumption amount to approximately 86 million tons per year, accounting for 80% of the total. 80% of the emissions within purchased goods come from lighting, air conditioning, and ventilation equipment. Panasonic will focus on improving energy savings in these products to drastically cut Scope 3 emissions, highlighted in light green. As the world shifts to a global carbon neutrality toward 2050, Panasonic will contribute to energy transformation in society through proposing to our B2B and B2G customers ways to significantly improve energy savings and generation and effective use of clean energy.
These aspirations to expand our contributions are shown at the bottom of the graph in dark green. Panasonic has a wide range of customers in various industries. We believe encouraging them to reduce CO2 emissions will help accelerate the transition to carbon neutrality globally, and these initiatives shall have an impact on advancing the energy transformation for the entire global society. We call these initiatives the Panasonic Green Impact Solutions and are fully committed to expanding them as the Panasonic Group. 2050 may seem far away, and it might be difficult to precisely sketch a carbon-neutral society in three decades. However, achieving carbon neutrality is a must and must be accomplished as early as possible. In order to achieve this, we will accelerate contributions in CO2 reductions together with our customers through our various businesses in the areas of lifestyle, town, mobility, and supply chain.
One example is to significantly reduce energy consumption both for purchased products and production, also not wasting energy upon our business activities to reduce CO2 emissions. We will accelerate switching from fossil fuel to electricity and furthermore switching the entire energy supplies to renewables. We believe our actions to expand clean energy from the demand side in various industries will have a corresponding impact on accelerating the use of renewables from the supply side. Another initiative for a carbon-neutral society is circularity of natural resources, incorporating the concept of a circular economy, which aims for sustainable growth without depending on natural resources. We are working to reduce CO2 emissions through the product lifecycle. Let me share some specific examples of our green impact initiatives toward achieving a carbon-neutral society.
These are the examples of energy savings in use of products: lighting, air conditioning, and ventilation, which account for the majority of CO2 emissions in Scope 3. First, the lighting. We aim to reduce up to 30% energy savings without compromising comfort by applying existing lighting designs having the brightness of flat surfaces, such as a floor or a desk, setting indices for the perception of brightness in a spatial environment based on our comfort, comfortability, R&D, and making full use of our lighting control technologies and expertise of spatial presentation with suitable lighting adjusted for the appropriate environment. In air conditioning and ventilation, the stronger the demand and our competitiveness, the more energy will be consumed in line with sales growth. We will continue to develop equipment innovations and strengthen our product ranges by coordinating air conditioning with ventilation.
We aim to achieve approximately 40% energy reduction in this area by 2030 and improve energy savings as a whole. Specifically, we will leverage our accumulated R&D capability in refrigerant circuit technologies and accelerate innovations in equipment such as outdoor units that use waste heat for superior efficiency during cooling operation. We will optimize control of both air conditioning and ventilation equipment by reducing heat loss in ventilation and managing air quality using sensing technologies. By doing so, we can realize both minimizing energy consumption and increasing comfort. Now, a few examples of expanding our contributions to energy transformation for society. Many countries are accelerating shift to an integration of renewables into the power grid. It is essential to replace fossil fuel-based equipment with electrical equipment in the demand side power consumption, that is, to promote energy transformation by electrification.
A hot water heat pump system, air to water, is an efficient heating solution that can capture heat energy from the ambient air and run with little electricity. This system can be applied to new houses and also to existing houses equipped with oil or gas boiler common in Europe and can be applied without replacing existing pipes. Shifting to electrification will contribute to increased opportunities to use electricity from renewables to convert and store unstageable renewables in the form of hot water. The second example is our initiatives in the effective use of waste energy. For the gradual shift to carbon neutrality, we are working on leveraging efficient use of waste heat from factories and thermal energy from cogeneration power systems with our absorption chiller system, which uses heat as a power source to run cooling operation, and it can use waste heat from various sources.
As the system uses water as refrigerant, it can use waste heat from various resources, and there are no concerns about emitting GHG or CFC. A case study at Panasonic Facility demonstrated a 17% reduction in CO2 emissions by sourcing power from renewables such as hydrogen fuel cell. The effective use of waste heat will be promoted not only in our group facilities but also to a wide range of customers such as hospitals, public facilities, and factories.
Next is our contributions to expansion of environment-friendly vehicles. Our basic strategy in automotive battery business for environment-friendly vehicles is to further enhance competitiveness in battery capacity, cost, and supply capability. The 4680 cell with the higher capacity is widely considered the next mainstream cylindrical type battery. Panasonic will continue to build its strength in high-quality, high-safety batteries and to achieve industry-leading cost competitiveness by further productivity improvement.
Furthermore, we installed a new line at the North American factory to meet sharply increased demand for current main product 2170 cell. Through these efforts to increase the competitiveness, Panasonic aims to take further initiatives to reduce environmental impact with a total approach from reuse to recycling and to make the contributions to the purification of environmentally friendly vehicles. Finally, our initiatives to explore new ways of expanding renewable energy with full-fledged utilization of hydrogen. We will begin testing of our RE100 solutions with hydrogen technology in spring 2022 at Kusatsu Factory in Shiga Prefecture, where we produce fuel cell systems. This RE100 solution combines a pure hydrogen fuel cell generator, solar power generation, and lithium-ion storage battery. Currently, its system uses hydrogen derived from the fossil fuel. However, through these new approaches, we could also accelerate initiatives for suppliers who produce hydrogen from renewable sources.
We continue to increase our contributions to reduce CO2 emissions, and we'll make greater contributions in achieving a carbon-neutral society. Next, I'd like to explain our contributions to the circular society, in particular use of natural resources, which is another important factor to solve global environment issues along with energy transformation. Panasonic has been conducting to expand the use of recycled resin in our home appliances through recycling home appliances. These initiatives help to reduce the waste of resin. More specifically, our unique technologies are capable of sorting shredded residue of waste home appliances into three major types of resins at a material purity of over 99%. These recycled resins are processed to recover their chemical properties and to elongate the lifespan, which are required for new products supplying with our unique know-how, including adding materials and new formulas.
In addition, we have been improving the quality of all the processes surrounding circularity of natural resources from securing stable supply of recycled resins and establishing technologies to be used in products. Next, our initiatives toward the circular society in batteries. Lithium-ion batteries used in environment-friendly vehicles are being collected and recycled according to the regulation in each country. In this particular recycling process, we are strengthening our initiatives for both reduction of loss in manufacturing processes and collection of the end-of-life products. Furthermore, from a circular society perspective, elongating repeatedly used battery life, in other words, improved cycle counts for battery, is important. We continue to develop unique charging, discharging, controlling technologies according to individual battery characteristics, as well as conditions from usage. These technologies will enable prevent aging, deterioration, and prolong battery life. These initiatives are just some of the examples that we are working on.
We continue to make our contributions in various fields as soon as and as much as possible, not leaving global environment issues to the next generations. Next, I will introduce examples of the initiatives toward achieving well-being in lifestyle of people who live and work in society. First is a Yohana service started in the United States in September 2021, which offers the personal assistance service to support busy families. Designated experts lighten the customer's load by providing solutions that tackle the to-do list, and chores, and make things easier in everyday life. Using the latest AI technology, the designated real human assistant can efficiently offer support by giving suggestions that anticipate each customer's actual needs. The assistant also works with local experts in various fields to help customers create value for time, for more meaningful moments, raising the quality of everyday life.
We offer a lifestyle enriched with more room in one's mind. Second is our town development initiatives. In China, the aging of society is accelerating, with the population aged 65 and above reaching 190 million. We are engaged there in town development business for elderly in cooperation with local partners. We support and stand by each individual and offer lifestyle enriched with long-lasting health through services based on automatically measuring the health conditions of residents in day-to-day living. Automated control of the residential space for comfortable sleeping and relaxation, face-to-face consultation with concierge based on the health condition data, and prediction of possible decline in physical and cognitive functions. By offering more room in one's mind and a healthier lifestyle, we will support the well-being of people. Next, let's look at examples of providing well-being in work styles.
By using Blue Yonder's high-level data analytics to visualize and optimize the links in the overall supply chain, we can continuously generate a big improvement cycle. Combining this cycle with our unique competitive edge devices, cultivated by staying close to many manufacturing gemba or operational frontlines, we will further accelerate the improvement of gembas to become more autonomous and digitized. Thus, we expect conventional operations will become significantly more efficient so that the people who work there can be engaged in more creative activities. In addition, we can solve the management issues such as aging workforce, lack of successes of those who have been supporting the gemba, as well as basic labor shortages. We can also contribute to saving natural resources and reducing food waste. Another example is a demonstration office set up in our Shiodome building in Tokyo called worXl ab, where our employees are actually working.
The aim is to create workplaces conducive to a new normal. We aim to offer a more comfortable and healthier work environment by optimizing the workspace from the perspective of human beings. This will be done through the acquisition and analysis of the variety of data: human data, including vital signs, location information, and conversation behavior, and environment data, including CO2 concentration levels, temperature, humidity, and facility data, the actual use of equipment. At this building, we will refine the solutions and then make proposals to our corporate customers. We will make contributions to support the well-being in work style with safe and comfortable and worker-friendly gemba. Earlier in my presentation, I said that we must support the well-being of each employee at Panasonic to enhance our competitiveness. We are to achieve the contribution to society and well-being of our customers.
Panasonic has approximately 240,000 employees globally with diverse personalities and capabilities. Our responsibility is to strike an ideal balance between the work style and lifestyle for our diverse human capital. Specifically, upon consideration at each operating company and consultation with the labor union, we aim to introduce a four-day work week as an option. This would also allow us to flexibly accommodate the various situations of our employees. Moreover, we aim to introduce a work-from-home system to retain employees whose partners are transferred to other locations. Furthermore, we aim to revise the appraisal system as well as the promotion and screening system. This will allow us to achieve the balance between the work style and lifestyle for those who wish to take up the challenges.
At Panasonic, I regret to say the percentage of the female employees in positions of responsibility is pretty low compared with the percentage of overall female employees in our group. The reality is that many of our female employees, under current conditions, find it difficult to take up challenges. For example, some female employees encounter excessive burdens in promotion and screening. Therefore, they just give up under such trying conditions. We should aim and will change these conditions as soon as possible. Today, I highlighted a few examples of our initiatives, but there is much room for improvement. We aim to make Panasonic a group in which every employee feels they can fully demonstrate their individual capability. In addition, we would adopt a more flexible HR system and support employees according to each business environment.
By doing this, we can increase our competitiveness as a group with our diverse employees. Finally, I'd like to explain the type of governance that supports sustainability management. From the next fiscal year, we will transition to our new medium to long-term strategy, focusing on sustainability. The operating companies are currently discussing hypothetical strategies based on the solutions to societal and environmental issues, envisioning a 10-year horizon and on the measures needed to materialize those solutions. With the sense of speed, they will not wait for the new fiscal year if anything can be started immediately. In addition, we will eliminate waste and stagnation at all gembas to speed up businesses. In other words, slowly enhance the operational capabilities. With significantly increased empowerment and responsibility, each operating company will execute more wide-ranging autonomous management as an independent entity.
The holding company will ensure and support the operating company's known financial KPIs to enhance competitiveness, that is, competitiveness KPI of the management holding company, including myself. We will participate in each operating company's board meeting for more thorough discussions. In addition, the Sustainability Management Committee, which I chair, will discuss topics that need to be addressed group-wide based on the requirements from the stakeholders outside the company, such as our shareholders. These topics would include environmental and societal issues in particular, and we will ensure the support of the measures developed through those discussions get the support they need. Remuneration of the board members and executive officers of the holding company, as well as the heads of operating companies, will be linked to the evaluation made from the perspective of sustainability. Today, I have shared our vision and values in management.
Although we may not have explicitly used the expression ESG in the past communications, you can now understand that ESG management has always been the core of our management philosophy. Returning to our inherited basic business philosophy, it is exactly about conducting sustainable management while we also make our utmost efforts toward achieving a sustainable society, an ideal society with affluence both in matter and mind. Each of us businesses makes different contributions to customers and society. However, we all share the same group-wide goal of achieving an ideal society. We will strive to make contributions to each customer, attaining their suitable ideal lifestyle and ideal work style, and also to a global environment.
Through those efforts, we will return the profit earned as a result of such valued work to society, which will lead to the enhanced corporate value from the perspective of stakeholders, as well as enterprise value in financial terms. Thank you for your attention.
From Daiwa Securities, Mr. Sakai, please.
Thank you, Sakai from Daiwa Securities. I hope you can hear me.
Yes, we can.
Thank you for the presentation. I have one broad question: CO2 emissions reduction. What will you be working within your group and the things that need to be addressed outside of the Panasonic group? I think there are two points, two aspects. First, regarding the former, what you can do within the group. On page five, you are showing us some of the examples. No, page seven, sorry. You are showing some of the examples.
Regarding the air conditioning and ventilation, you talked about the coordination of the two systems for up to 40% reduction. For the last five years, how much progress have you been making in terms of the reductions each year? Regarding external activities for CO2 emissions reduction, I think technology has to be advanced, and emissions credit system will have to be used. I think there are factors that are beyond your control regarding the carbon price, for example, within scope three. What are your views on that?
Thank you for your questions. Regarding the average reduction in the past, I'm afraid we don't have the data at hand, so I might not be responding directly to your question. Earlier, I mentioned 40% reduction. Air conditioning and the ventilation system being coordinated on a per-system basis, 40% reduction will be the target.
Alternatively, the air conditioning demand is expected to increase. Compared to when there are no energy-saving efforts, through our efforts in reducing 40%, we can make up for an increase in the demand itself. In total, even with the increase in number of units, we want to reduce the total emissions overall. That is what we are going to aim at. I hope that answers your question.
How about CO2 emissions reductions technologies? What technologies do you wish to realize, as well as what your approach is regarding the credit trading system? Any comments?
Regarding the emissions credit system, it is still not clear as to how the institution itself is going to be established. As far as we are concerned, through the efforts that I mentioned earlier, we are going to work on areas where reductions can be attained.
Now, on the supply side, towards 2050, we expect major change. In the case of Japan, changes in the supply side for more renewables might lag behind other countries. Overall, toward 2050, the electricity, the power generation, the power supply system itself is going to become more renewable-based. Through our efforts in developing the technologies for energy saving and what have you, we would like to promote further use of renewables. Regarding the question of what our position is with regards to the credit system, I'm afraid we're not in a position to comment on that yet.
I see. Thank you.
Nakane-san from Mizuho Securities.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
Thank you. Just one question. It's a basic question, I'm afraid. The earlier question about the CO2 emission reduction and organizational scheme for that.
For example, what is the positioning in the holding company and how is it related to the operating companies? Mr. Kusumi, yourself and the executive leaders, how do you get involved? Thank you.
This time, accelerating those efforts in that sense. In the holding company, we have a sustainability management committee which will be established. As I said earlier, I will be the chair of that committee and CTO, Mr. Ogawa, in charge of environment, and Mishima-san in CHRO because it has to do with the human rights. They will be the vice chairs of this committee. What we do in this committee is, of course, to look into the sustainability in environment and also the human rights at the holding company based on the question that how to respond to the demand of the society.
We would report this to the board of directors meeting so that they can also discuss this and also to make sure that this will be instilled to the operating company. That is how we would organize ourselves. Mr. Nakane, does that answer your question?
Yes. Thank you. How you work with the operating companies, how you align with them, what about the rights and also the authorities about this?
This sustainability management committee, aside from the BOD as a governance scheme, in addition to the committee in the holding company, it would be the group management committees. They would go across the different operating companies. They would discuss the common topics and making decisions. That is how we will be making decisions.
Thank you.
Next, from SMBC Nikko Securities, Katsura-san, please.
Thank you. I hope you can hear me.
Yes.
Thank you. I have two questions. First, slide five, some specific question, if I may, regarding the procurement. Cobalt procurement, what are your thoughts on cobalt procurement in Congo and elsewhere? There is an issue of child labor. How are you currently managing the procurement? From the supply chain, any changes in the request from the supply chain? The background to that question is that to what extent you can go along the supply chain to control and manage the whole process. If you just look at the emissions, I'm afraid there will be some issues related to the synthesis. I'm wondering what your thoughts are here. Can I ask the second question as well?
Mr. Katsura, if you could stop there, we'd appreciate it. Thank you for your question.
The human rights issue, to what extent can we really oversee the whole supply chain is the question. Respecting human rights has always been one of the major principles for us, as decided and determined by United Nations, ILO, and others. We are complying with legal and regulatory requirements, and we ask our supply chain, the suppliers, to do the same. We supply from over 10,000 suppliers in our procurement process, but we ask them to do a thorough investigation, examination, and assessment. Where we can, we have our direct oversight as well. Through this, we have not encountered an issue that you mentioned. Now, cobalt is a rare metal, so there is a risk. On one hand, through the technology development, we have established a technology of cobalt-free battery.
Should there be any demand from the customers, we are ready to supply that into the market. While reducing the necessary amount of cobalt needed, we will be, of course, addressing the human rights requirements as well.
I see. Thank you. My second question pertains to slide 14. The KPIs for competitiveness, in other words, non-financial KPIs, I think this would be for operating companies. Including the financial KPIs, I think you are discussing both at the same time. From our perspective and also from a larger public's point of view, we would appreciate it if you could communicate more about this based on what is being discussed today within your group. Anything that you can share with us regarding this aspect?
Thank you for your questions. Non-financial KPIs, KGI, this is different from the financial KPIs.
These would be indices that are in line with the characteristics of each business. On a per-business basis, we should be ready to talk about that when the medium-term business plans are put together, specifically meaning April or later. What do we have in mind? I think there are two types, broadly speaking. One thing with 10-year horizon, how we envision our change to realize the strategies, what needs to be changed to be assessed qualitatively and quantitatively. That is one type. The other is more in relation to the daily operation, the productivity, the lead time. These are the operation-related KPIs which need to be looked at on a daily basis. These two different types of KPIs will be used for the operating companies depending on the type of businesses they are in. For the major ones, holding company will be overseeing them.
Very clear.
Thank you very much.
Ono-san from Morgan Stanley MUFG.
Thank you very much for your presentation. My name is Ono. First question, I have two questions, actually. The first one is a specific question about the automotive battery. When you talked about this, 4680 to improve the efficiency was already mentioned. At the same time as it says here in the presentation material on page nine, reuse and recycling are also included in your thinking. If you can talk about your direction in this area, I would like to know them very much. The background of this question is that the EU, for example, is showing the clear direction since last year about this topic. More specifically, the leading-edge automotive as an automotive battery supplier, how do you see this and what would be the direction?
Naturally, about the automotive batteries, the reuse and recycling, they are conducted based on the regulation of each country. For example, in Japan, we have a rule concerning the handling of the wasted materials and so forth. In North America, the other day at the CES, as we made announcement there, the Redwood, we work with Redwood. For example, in our factory, we have a capability to efficiently recycle the materials. In terms of the size of that, there will be a lot of batteries reaching their lives. We would need a system to recycle them, and we cannot do this alone. I think we need to work as an industry as a whole. We would like to make sure that we work on this because the resources for the battery are limited.
We would make sure that we would take necessary measures.
Thank you. My second question is about diversity. From that perspective, you explained that the female employees, the percentage of the female employees with responsibility is still limited at Panasonic. About diversity, how do you plan to make improvements to increase this percentage? In April and onwards this year, you will start the new holding company system and operating company system. As a holding company with a certain criteria, for example, you are going to reform the human resource policy or change, or how frequently do you plan to rotate personnel or what kind of different ideas are you going to introduce after changing into the holding company system? Do you have any plans? With those changes, realizing the higher diversity, can we expect the improved diversity?
We would appreciate it if you can share as much as you can at this moment.
Yes. Thank you for your question. Mishima, Group CHRO, would like to respond to your question.
Basically, as an assumption, in this new holding company system, we would support each management of the operating companies. We would like to take advantage of the capability of the human resources. Of course, the assumption is that each operating company would be responsible for that. In order to do that, as a holding company, we will make sure that the management philosophy is well understood and diversity is something that each operating company will very much focus upon. Also, employees, we would like to make sure there is a good compliance, including the safety and security of all the employees. We will be supporting all of those operating companies.
In order to realize the diversity, we have 240,000 global employees in our group. Each one of them, we would like to make sure that we can maximize their potential. That is what we'd like to realize. Those people who want to challenge themselves, we'd like to make sure that they can take advantage of their capabilities. That's our way of thinking in diversity. Regardless of each operating company and different industries and sectors, this is a common topic that is diversity. Especially the women, foreigners, there are very excellent human capital. We'd like to, of course, emphasize that diversity. As for women, female employees, in fact, we have a 30% Club. That is the arbitrary club we joined so that about the promotion of the female employees, 30% female employees with a higher responsibility by 2030 is our target.
As Panasonic, we joined this. In April and onwards toward 2030, we will be clarifying the roadmap as a holding company. At the same time, at each operating company, on page 13 of the presentation by Mr. Kusumi, he already talked about this. For example, due to life events, for example, weddings and as well as giving birth to children, the female employees were disadvantaged in the current system. We recognize that. Concerning that, based on the needs of each operating company, we, the operating company—sorry, the holding company would like to take the leadership in promoting women, and we want to accelerate that. That is some of the efforts that we are looking into so that we can promote diversity more specifically. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
We are already running over time, but I think we can entertain one more question. From Credit Suisse, Ishimaro-s an, please.
Thank you. I hope you can hear me.
Yes, we can.
Just one question. Thank you for your presentation. Regarding the energy-saving services and products and technologies, in terms of your competitiveness, what is your current view compared to your competitors for consumers and B2B? To further disseminate the energy-saving products and services, any plans that you have?
Thank you for your question. Today, I talked about many products and services, which would include, for example, for the absorption-type chiller system, we have the industry's number one performance. Whereas there are areas in which our competitive edge is on par with our competitors for air conditioning and ventilation, for example, as well as humidity control. By combining these different systems, we want to further enhance the efficiency.
That is the purpose of having this new organization. Even for the areas where we do enjoy a strong competitive edge, we want to make sure that we maintain that and we further enhance our competitiveness. For the areas where we are still on par with the competitors, we will be making further efforts to catch up and do better.
I see. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Our time is up. With that, we'd like to end the sustainability briefing. If you can, please give us your feedback through the survey. Thank you very much indeed for your participation.