By finan­cial year 2025/26: Climate neutrality in Scopes 1 and 2  

To become climate-neutral in Scopes 1 and 2 by the 2025/26 finan­cial year, ebm-papst is focusing on several key measures. Hans-Jürgen Withopf, Sustain­ability Manager, explains: “We are contin­u­ously improving our energy effi­ciency, as shown by our efforts to use process waste heat and imple­ment effi­cient shut­down manage­ment, for example. This allows us to save up to six percent on our CO₂e emis­sions compared to our previous figures.” Every year, we invest more than three million euros in the in-house gener­a­tion of renew­able ener­gies and the elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of fossil energy sources.

The purchase of green elec­tricity in Germany, China, and the USA also plays a deci­sive role: this has already enabled us to cut 49.6 percent of our Scope 1 and 2 emis­sions. Now, we want to extend this successful approach to other coun­tries, including Hungary, Slovenia, Romania, and Italy. Finally, we will offset our remaining emis­sions. “This is the very last step towards achieving climate neutrality in Scopes 1 and 2: to tackle emis­sions that can neither be avoided nor reduced,” empha­sizes Klaus Wittmann, Director of ESG. 

Digital assis­tance 

Digi­tal­iza­tion plays a key role in sustain­ability. Projects such as “Sustain­a­lyze” show how soft­ware can help us seam­lessly docu­ment and opti­mize our sustain­ability perfor­mance. “We are always searching for tools that can help us with our sustain­ability analysis and the related complex data collec­tion processes,” explains Annemarie Hillen­brand, Sustain­ability Manager.  

Our aim by the end of 2024 is to create complete trans­parency regarding our Scope 3 emis­sions and to expand our “neutrality roadmap” to include Scope 3. We have already made partial assump­tions, which we now want to vali­date by using complete primary data. “Recording the CO₂e foot­print along the entire value chain is a complex process. Coop­er­a­tion with our suppliers and part­ners is partic­u­larly impor­tant to our success. That’s why we aim to always keep commu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels with our suppliers and partner compa­nies open and to work with them to bring joint pilot projects to life,” explains Annemarie Hillen­brand.

We have already iden­ti­fied a reduc­tion poten­tial of 25 percent, which we aim to realize using strategic reduc­tion projects. We see the greatest poten­tial for improve­ment at ebm-papst in the areas of purchased goods and services, capital goods, upstream and down­stream logis­tics, and the product use phase. “We are working with our part­ners to develop new busi­ness models that will reduce our CO₂e foot­print in Scope 3, espe­cially for the product use phase, i.e. when our prod­ucts are in use in the end appli­ca­tion,” Klaus Wittmann empha­sizes. 

Certi­fi­ca­tions, ratings, and asso­ci­ated targets 

We constantly measure our sustain­ability targets through various eval­u­a­tion plat­forms to moti­vate our ongoing progress. We currently have a “D” rating in the CDP (Carbon Disclo­sure Project). We see this as a starting point for our contin­uous improve­ment, as Annemarie Hillen­brand is keen to stress: “We are highly ambi­tious and aim to grad­u­ally become one of the leading compa­nies in this field. Following a compre­hen­sive analysis of the results, we are already devel­oping further targeted measures to reduce emis­sions in prepa­ra­tion for our next rating.” 

As part of the Science Based Targets initia­tive (SBTi), we are working to vali­date our reduc­tion targets in line with the Paris Agree­ment. This initia­tive ensures that our goals are scien­tif­i­cally sound and ambi­tious while making a measur­able contri­bu­tion to global climate protec­tion. We have already received a Silver Medal from EcoVadis, putting us in the top 20 percent of the industry. This recog­ni­tion fills us with pride, and at the same time, moti­vates us to contin­u­ously improve our sustain­ability perfor­mance.  

Focus on the big picture 

Ulti­mately, all our analyses, ratings, certi­fi­ca­tions, and measures serve one major goal: to limit the global temper­a­ture rise to well below 2°C as compared to pre-indus­trial levels. Based on this, the Euro­pean Green Deal envis­ages climate neutrality by 2050, which means a reduc­tion in Green­house Gas emis­sions of at least 55 percent by 2030 (compared to 1990). 

“We are aware that we have set ambi­tious targets for ourselves. But the way we see it, this is our only chance to make a signif­i­cant contri­bu­tion to the Paris Climate Agree­ment. As a Sustain­ability team, we can achieve and initiate a lot on our own, but we need support when it comes to imple­men­ta­tion. We there­fore rely on team­work and ongoing collab­o­ra­tion with our suppliers, customers, employees, and all our stake­holders,” says Annemarie Hillen­brand, appealing to the commit­ment of every indi­vidual.