To address water supply shortage, one of the water issues, the Sumitomo Electric Group has been promoting activities to reduce water use since fiscal 2008. In fiscal 2008, we set a target of reducing water use and have since been working to reduce water use per unit of sales by 1% per year. In the course of the reduction activities, we identify water leakage in our facilities and address it while also working to reduce water withdrawal through such initiatives as the reuse of effluent that used to be discharged.

We have evaluated water risks indicated by 13 indicators in total, including water quantity, water quality, regulations according to local laws and relations with neighboring communities, on a five-point scale by using Aqueduct＊, which is a tool to evaluate such risks in Japan and overseas manufacturing sites. As in fiscal 2022, we focused on floods and droughts in fiscal 2023 and identified priority sites with high risks and significant challenges. This evaluation method calculates a risk point (RP) on floods and droughts for each site based on the evaluation of four risk items, which are river flooding, coastal flooding, water depletion and dry weather, on a five-point scale first and then evaluates the sites based on “the probability of occurrence of water risks” (the RP mentioned above) and “the magnitude of the impact when a risk occurs” (on sales or water use) as the two axes to recognize the sites in the red zones of the matrix as those with important issues. As a result, the number of sites with important issues on floods and droughts increased to five from four, and to two from one, respectively. With Aqueduct’s water stress data renewed for the first time since 2019, the number of our sites located in “Extremely High areas” doubled from 12 in fiscal 2019 to 24 in fiscal 2023, and the water withdrawal amounts to 1,204 m3 (9% of overall water withdrawal).

*Aqueduct: A tool developed by the World Resources Institute (WRI) to evaluate water risks in various parts of the world. Water risks to the bases located on a world atlas are　quantitatively evaluated on a five-point scale.