As I look back over the last year of sustainability activities at Alcatel-Lucent, for me more than ever, 2012 “is the year of achievement.” As you watch our highlights video below and on the pages of our Sustainability website, you will find circle factoids telling a story. It is the story of a global team demonstrating innovation, talent and continued achievement on our three core priorities of green, people and digital inclusion as well as our three values, all within a very challenging business environment.

The numbers speak for themselves— in just four years on our green targets alone, we have increased the energy efficiency of our key products by more than 25% and in some cases, up to 176%. We demonstrated our commitment to sustainable innovation through the launch of our ground breaking 7950 XRS router providing more capacity, more network versatility and more accessibility while dramatically cutting power and space costs by 50% for our customers over a five year horizon. More than 50 Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs scientists, researchers and engineers have been involved in research and collaborations focused on green and energy efficient communications, networking and computing. Approximately 10% of our patents are dedicated to green innovations with Thomson Reuters naming Alcatel-Lucent as one of the Top 100 global innovators recognizing our world-class patent portfolio. At the same time, we have continued to dramatically reduce our own carbon footprint by 29%– more than half way to our 50% target by 2020 (2008 baseline)– generating important cost and energy savings for our company. Finally, Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs has made tangible inroads through our leadership in the Green Touch™ Consortium. In 2012, GreenTouch had over 350 experts in 23 countries worldwide working to make telecommunications networks 1, 000 times more energy efficient. These are just a few examples of the many achievements our colleagues across the company have achieved in favor of sustainability.

Our performance has been recognized by key global stakeholders. For the second year in a row, in 2012 we led the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the Communications Technology Sector and were named Technology Supersector leader. In early 2013, RobecoSAM awarded us the Gold Class and Sector Sustainability Award putting us among the top 2.5% of all companies assessed worldwide. We also achieved the Advanced Level of the United Nations (UN) Global Compact and were ranked among the top 25 performers of the UN’s Caring for Climate Initiative. NYSE EuroNext Vigeo ranked us among the top performers in three indexes: Vigeo World 120, Vigeo Europe 120 and Vigeo France 20. And this year, our reporting has been assessed by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) with an A+ Level requirement.

As we move forward in 2013, we will continue to make sustainability a key differentiator—devoted to customer satisfaction, innovation in our industry, proactive stakeholder dialogue, but ultimately, continued employee talent and pride.