History

GDF SUEZ has been supporting the PlaNet Finance NGO since 2006

GDF SUEZ is a world player in energy and the environment. The Group has focused on responsible growth within its business activities to take up major global energy and environmental challenges: meet energy needs, ensure security of supply, fight against climatic changes and maximize resource utilisation.
GDF SUEZ’s corporate patronage policy clearly indicates its social responsibility, bringing its core values into life. As a link between the corporate world and the people they deal with, this policy soundly involves the Group in community life and testifies to its civic commitments.

Solidarity, the environment and employee commitment are at the heart of GDF SUEZ’s corporate patronage policy

GDF SUEZ is taking an active part in helping to develop the countries that it operates, where its 218,000 employees live and work. They support the world of associations, those deeply involved in actions for the common good.

GDF SUEZ encourages and sponsors numerous actions of solidarity for vulnerable people. These actions are part of a long-term policy to work with their partners on a sustainable basis.

Together with PlaNet Finance, GDF SUEZ has been helping since 2006 to reduce poverty through programmes that respect the environment.

In 2010, GDF SUEZ renewed their partnership, with three PlaNet Finance programmes and joined the European Internet platform responsible for microcredit, MicroWorld.org:

  • The “Business in the Suburbs” (Entreprendre en Banlieue) programme
  • The “FinanCités” programme
  • The “Microfinance & Energy” programme »

    • It is in this context, that GDF SUEZ chose to team up with MicroWorld.org.

    GDF SUEZ, partner of three programmes:

    Since 2006, GDF SUEZ has been supporting the Business in the Suburbs program (Entreprendre en Banlieue), whose aim is to seek out and prepare promising young entrepreneurs, especially those out of work and/or in insecure situations in sensitive urban areas (Zones Urbaines Sensibles – ZUS), for setting up their own businesses. This programme has in particular helped detect the finance and support needs of young entrepreneurs striving to grow their business.

    GDF SUEZ has also given financial support to FinanCités, a responsible venture capital company devoted to financing micro-businesses in these underprivileged urban districts since it was founded in 2007.
    At the same time, GDF SUEZ has provided FinanCités with experienced volunteer coaches to help the entrepreneurs develop their activity.

    GDF SUEZ supports projects worldwide:

    GDF SUEZ teamed up with PlaNet Finance to develop its “Microfinance & Energy” programme in China, getting involved with this innovative project over a three-year period, from 2007 to 2010.
    The idea of the project is to help numerous families living in Tongwei, a rural Chinese district, who require gas for their farming activities, to get a loan to obtain Biogas1. With each loan comes training on the use and benefits of biogas.

    As a biofuel, biogas has several advantages:

    • It has reduced greenhouse gas emissions.
    • It can be used as a substitute for other exogenous (fossil and nuclear) fuels and is a revenue source for the farmer who can make energy savings and/or sell more and more generated energy.
    • It reduces vegetable waste carbon levels. Once digested, the waste is less poisonous for the environment; furthermore, biological and organic pollution risks are greatly lessened and fermentation reduces the percentage of dry matter, giving less volume for transporting and spreading.

    In partnership with the Tongwei Energy Bureau, this entire project enabled more than 600 families to install a biogas system over the 2008-2009 period and helped them fight both against population expulsion and for cleaner energy.

    * On 1st April 2010, PlaNet Finance introduced the ambitious FreemE2 programme(for promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency in Morocco and Egypt). The goal of this programme is to support the development of, access to and sustainable use of renewable energy and energy efficiency services through microfinance in Morocco and Egypt. GDF SUEZ rallied to this cause to help local players strengthen their technical and institutional capabilities and to encourage microfinance organisations to create financial models and develop consciousness-raising actions that would facilitate their customers’ access to renewable energy and energy efficiency. The project plans to involve 12,500 different stakeholders from the public and private sectors in both countries over a three year period.

    International Microfinance Awards: GDF SUEZ sponsors microfinance

    On 16th December 2010, PlaNet Finance celebrated the International Microfinance Awards at the Louvre Museum in Paris. During this event, 8 top micro-entrepreneurs from all over the world were rewarded for their ambitious and promising projects.

    The award for the “Environment” category was attributed by GDF SUEZ to Lirenza Cardenas Chavez from Peru for her ecological agriculture and reforestation project, sponsored by the MFI Movimiento Manuela Ramos-Unidad de microfinanzas “CrediMujer”.

    Today, GDF SUEZ supports MicroWorld

    Through MicroWorld, GDF SUEZ gives its employees the opportunity to use microcredit to help micro-entrepreneurs finance their own professional projects. As a founding member of MicroWorld, GDF SUEZ is the first company to introduce an online loan platform in the group’s name and for its own benefit. With this dedicated website, GDF SUEZ employees can now:

    • select a topic, country and/or project that they’re personally interested in, to provide a loan to a micro-entrepreneur in a developing country
    • find out about the status and operation of the microfinance
    • create groups and communicate using the platform.

    For more information on MicroWorld and how it operates, click here.

    1 Biogas, a combustible gas, is a mixture of, on average, 65% methane (CH4) and 35% carbon dioxide (CO2). It is a renewable energy derived from biomass.