Commitments

As a global leader in the professional distribution of electrical products and services for the energy world, Rexel plays a pivotal role in providing energy efficiency in the built environment (across the residential, commercial and industrial sectors). Rexel provides the link between all major stakeholders in the industry, from the utility companies and manufacturers to electrical contractors and, installers and the final consumer. The Group operates in 38 countries supplying sustainable products and value-added services for end users (increasing productivity for businesses, and comfort for consumers).

Day-in-day-out Rexel is working with hundreds of thousands of electrical contractors and installers across the world, ensuring energy efficiency is systematic in everything they do.

.  Through the Energy in Motion company plan, energy efficiency is at the heart of Rexel’s strategy, its product and service offering and its commitments.

Through its expertise and proximity to its customers and partners, both on an international and local level, Rexel believes that:

• Energy progress is a value creator, not just for the economy, but for society at large because energy provides the foundation for everything we do, it powers heating, transport, communications, industry….
• The energy efficiency value chain is an ecosystem where no one player is master and in which the multiplier effect can make a real difference. This is why we need a global vision to meet the challenges, and a partnership approach to accelerate the energy transition.

The Rexel Foundation: a key step to stronger commitment

Backed by the courage of its convictions and the support of the Fondation de France, the launch of the Rexel Foundation for a better energy future is testament to Rexel’s social and environmental commitment to the communities in which it operates. With this commitment, Rexel is setting a strategic challenge for all its stakeholders: to improve access to energy efficiency for all.

Three underlying reasons for creating the Rexel Foundation for a better energy future:

• Engagement that goes beyond Rexel’s direct commercial and financial interests: Rexel is a major player in the energy world, but the company’s financial and commercial constraints, mean that the extent of its involvement in finding solutions to the problem is restricted. The Foundation offers Rexel an opportunity to become more involved in initiatives unaffected by the contractual economic obligation with its suppliers and customers.
• Engagement for the long term: through the Foundation, Rexel can commit to long-term projects with a sustained defined scope, unaffected by company developments.
• Engagement with stakeholders: the Foundation provides a platform for dialogue and engagement with all key stakeholders.  

A continued community-focused commitment  

For a number of years, Rexel has been supporting community-focused initiatives in several countries through a community involvement charter that sets forth the Group’s scope of engagement. The charter has been designed to provide a framework for all the initiatives conducted by the Group’s subsidiaries that foster progress in energy efficiency (education, career training, assistance in building social housing, etc.).

A few examples of Rexel's community-based projects:

• Rexel signed a partnership with Ashoka, the world’s leading network of social entrepreneurs and in 2012 this led to the company signing an agreement in support of Next Steps, a project founded by social entrepreneur Stacey Epperson which helps provide access to affordable, prefabricated eco-efficient homes. The long-term objective with Ashoka is to create an international pool of social entrepreneurs working on initiatives in the field of energy efficiency.
• Rexel’s French subsidiary BizLine, which specializes in tools and consumables for electrical contractors, signed a partnership with the French NGO Electriciens sans Frontières (Electricians without Borders), which provides electricity to schools and health clinics in Peruvian villages (by funding photovoltaic panels). BizLine recently celebrated its 10th anniversary and participated in the Paris Marathon to raise money for Electriciens sans Frontières. The Rexel Group also donated money to the cause.
• In October 2012, as part of an agreement signed with the Schneider Electric Foundation, Rexel launched its first project in support of the Taiyuan school in Shanxi Province in China. The school trains underprivileged students in the energy trade and the project was supported by the Guangha Foundation, aims to refurbish and equip two laboratories and educate 300 students over two years.

To know more about the projects led by the Rexel group, click here.