Markus Mettler, Director of Tech­nical Oper­a­tions & Real Estate FM, has been involved in the devel­op­ment of this area since day one. He remem­bers our first, tenta­tive steps well: “When we founded the ‘Hohen­lohe Model’ regional initia­tive with a handful of fellow campaigners back in 1991, hardly anyone was talking about energy. It was only when we started imple­menting the energy effi­ciency tables in 2002 that the topic gained momentum.”

Today, energy consump­tion and energy effi­ciency are an inte­gral part of every corpo­rate strategy, just as they are at ebm-papst. To this end, the amount of energy required at the company – which is gener­ated and provided using a mixture of gas, elec­tricity, heating oil, and fuels – is largely docu­mented using a modern data collec­tion system. “We are working on incor­po­rating the ISO 50001 energy manage­ment stan­dard into our inte­grated manage­ment system,” says Markus Mettler.

Hollen­bach sets the stan­dard

Even aside from this initia­tive, we are already making very effi­cient use of the energy our company gener­ates itself. One example of this is our plant in Hollen­bach: Built in 2007, the plant is a plus energy building, which means that it produces more energy than the building itself requires. The site received an Energy Effi­ciency Award for its design in 2009. This effect is thanks largely to two photo­voltaic systems and two combined heat and power plants, which together generate around 3.5 million kWh/a. In the third quarter of 2024, a third photo­voltaic plant with around 2.2 million kWh/a will be connected to the grid.

“Once that is done, we will be producing around 5.7 million of the approx. 10 million kWh/a we need by ourselves. This will increase the percentage of our energy consump­tion that we cover ourselves. Other sustain­ability projects that we will be imple­menting include fitting the entire site with high-quality LED lights and, in the long term, replacing or elec­tri­fying our heating oil supply, a fossil fuel that we are still using currently.” Using waste heat from our produc­tion facil­i­ties and data center to heat cooler areas such as ware­houses and indi­vidual produc­tion areas also helps to increase our energy effi­ciency. Poten­tial thermal energy that cannot be used straight away is stored for later use.

Effi­cient energy use also extends to China

Along­side Hollen­bach, a great deal is also being done at ebm-papst’s other loca­tions to reduce energy consump­tion at the company to the bare minimum. It’s a huge under­taking that is already paying off: Within just one year, our company’s total energy consump­tion has fallen from around 156,000 MWh (FY 2022/23) to just under 141,000 MWh (FY 2023/24). And according to Markus Mettler, this posi­tive devel­op­ment also includes another impor­tant compo­nent: “We are managing not only to reduce our energy consump­tion, but also to contin­u­ously improve our energy effi­ciency. We are doing this by checking exactly how much energy we actu­ally need at each of our sites and for each of our projects world­wide, then deciding on the most effi­cient way possible to use it.”

It takes courage to be a pioneer. We want to break new ground, network, and grow prof­itably while using digi­tal­iza­tion and always striving for sustain­ability. With our inno­v­a­tive tech­nology, we are making a deci­sive contri­bu­tion to a sustain­able future.

Jan Philip­piak, Share­holder ebm-papst

The best example of this is our plant in Xi’an, China, which was built in 2019. “There, a powerful photo­voltaic system produces 1.45 million kWh/a and covers more than 25 percent of the plant’s own energy require­ments,” reports Alice Sheng, Quality Project Manager at ebm-papst China. And this figure is likely to improve further, as a second system with the same output volume is sched­uled for instal­la­tion in the next few years. This in-house share of energy gener­a­tion is supple­mented by geot­hermal heat pumps with a cooling capacity in summer/heating capacity in winter of 2,792/2,876 kW. The LED lighting installed when the plant was built also helps to improve the site’s energy effi­ciency. In 2021, the Xi’an plant became the first ebm-papst produc­tion facility to receive RESET certi­fi­ca­tion, thanks to the excel­lent air quality in the build­ings.