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Environment Week: University of Kassel and partners present results
Image: Klimaschutz-Unternehmen e.V.Today they presented their results at the Week of the Environment in Berlin. All ten companies have ambitious targets: The majority are at least oriented towards the Science Based Targets, which are based on the 1.5 °C target of the Paris Agreement. They want to become greenhouse gas neutral by 2045. To achieve this, the Group wants to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 80% from more than 165,000 tons in individual base years between 2018 and 2021 to just over 33,000 tons by the interim target of 2030. This corresponds to the emissions of almost 17,500 trips around the world by car or more than 2,160 flights from Frankfurt to Mallorca.
Project partners and participating companies advise other companies to make climate neutrality a strategic goal and see the transformation as an opportunity. "Climate change is a business risk to which companies must adapt their plans. If they minimize the negative environmental impact of their products, services and processes, they reduce the risks in the long term," says Philipp Andree, Managing Director of Climate Protection Companies. "In order to remain successful in a highly competitive market, we must and want to transform ourselves. That means change. It is important to encourage trainees and employees to contribute ideas and empower them to implement measures. They become ambassadors, which also strengthens our image and makes recruiting easier," advises Managing Director Tim Kohlhaas of KIS Antriebstechnik, whose family business with 43 employees aims to become energy self-sufficient by 2027. Transformation can mean new business models for companies and their supply chains, such as ZINQ, which protects steel and metal components from rust with zinc surfaces: "For the energy and material transformation2 to succeed, we need to operate in a completely circular way. This means switching from fossil fuels to renewables and consuming, using and recycling materials such as metals. In our circular business model, we consider all the negative and positive environmental impacts of our products and processes as well as climate-damaging emissions right from the design stage. We document the data and were able to present the first digital product passport (DPP) as a prototype in 2023. In it, we record all the environmental impacts of our products in scopes 1 to 3 and pass them on along the value chain. Product passports must be set up at the very beginning of the supply chain. The challenge is that this is precisely where data is often lacking," reports Managing Director Dr. Birgitt Bendiek.
"Companies are pioneers in climate neutrality and the circular economy. They know what needs to be done and show what is already possible. But we need to move even faster in Germany," concludes Prof. Jens Hesselbach, head of the upp, after two rounds of the project. When asked about the obstacles that the ten participating companies see on their path to climate neutrality, 70 percent cite a lack of technologies or experience with them, while 80 percent cite regulatory framework conditions. "Authorities are waiting for each other's approvals. Or we don't get certificates for new plants because there are no experts or it is not clear what the authorities require," explains Jan Faßbender, who is responsible for technology on the German management board of the pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim. "We need synchronized and consolidated planning procedures. Approvals for key building blocks of the transformation must be possible quickly, with low thresholds and limited public participation. And we need planning certainty. Germany needs an energy coordinator at federal level for the grid infrastructure for electricity, gas and hydrogen, to whom demand is reported, who coordinates the grid expansion up to the connection point and can say who will be connected when and with how much power," says Faßbender.
Regulation is also an obstacle for MPG Mendener Präzisionsrohr, which has been waiting nine months for certification of a new PV system. Added to this are the conversion costs for new acquisitions, which are becoming a problem for more and more companies. In summer 2023, this was an obstacle for half of the project companies, in spring 2024 for 80 percent. MPG manufactures copper-alloy heat exchanger tubes and aims to reduce its Scope 1 and 2 emissions to zero and Scope 3 emissions by 75 percent by 2030. "We are a very energy-intensive company, but we want to offer largely greenhouse gas-neutral products by 2030. To achieve this, we need to switch from natural gas to green electricity. However, compared to fossil fuels, the investment and operating costs for low-emission technologies are many times more expensive. We also lack the creditworthiness for such large investments and the transformation is hardly financially viable for us," says Managing Director Dr. Andreas Gahl.
Since the start of the "Pathways to a climate-neutral company" project at the beginning of 2021, 19 companies of different sizes from various sectors have taken part in the two-year project.Transformation plans for their individual paths to climate neutrality have been developed for all of them. Round 3 will start in autumn 2024 with the consulting firm Limón as an additional partner.
Ten companies took part in the second round of the "Pathways to a climate-neutral company" project, seven of which are climate protection companies:
ALMO-Erzeugnisse Erwin Busch GmbH
Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma GmbH & Co.KG*
Hailo-Werk Rudolf Loh GmbH & Co.KG
IMD Labor Oderland GmbH*
Irlbacher Blickpunkt Glas GmbH*
KIS Antriebstechnik GmbH & Co. KG*
KWS SAAT SE & Co. KGaA*
META-Regalbau GmbH & Co. KG
MPG Mendener Präzisionsrohr GmbH*
ZINQ GmbH & Co.KG*
* Climate protection companies
Portraits of the project companies, their recommendations for other companies, results of the surveys on obstacles, challenges with digital product passports and more information on both project rounds can be found here.
Contact:
Climate Protection Companies e. V.
Nina Goßlau
Project Manager
Phone: 0171 84 20 199
E-mail:gosslau[at]klimaschutz-unternehmen[dot]de
University of Kassel
Institute of Production Engineering and Logistics
Department of Environmentally Sound Products and Processes (upp)
Dr. Ron-Hendrik Hechelmann
Project Leader
Phone: 0561 80 43 444
E-mail:hechelmann[at]upp-kassel[dot]de
The Department of Environmentally Sound Products and Processes (upp) at the University of Kassel works on various research and industrial projects in the fields of energy and resource efficiency, decentralized and renewable energies as well as climate protection and climate strategies. This includes the collection, evaluation and benchmarking of energy data, flexible energy supply and load management as well as climate protection concepts.