Climate neutrality for practice

Project by climate protection companies and the University of Kassel supports companies in operational implementation

Kassel and Potsdam, 19.05.2021. At the beginning of 2021, the Climate Protection Companies Association and the Environmental Product and Process Engineering (upp) department at the University of Kassel launched their joint project „Paths to a climate-neutral company“. Over the next two years, custom-made roadmaps to climate neutrality will be developed for ten member companies.

„For companies, climate neutrality is an important building block for active climate protection. However, it is not yet clearly defined what this actually means, and businesses do not know how they are supposed to implement it in practice. We are making climate neutrality work for business operations. Together with the small, medium and large enterprises participating in the project, we are developing plans and measures for operational implementation. From the results, we are developing guidelines for climate neutrality that companies of various sectors and sizes can use as a guide, describes the head of the upp, Prof. Jens Hesselbach, outlining the project goals. Wolfgang Saam, Managing Director of Klimaschutz-Unternehmen e. V., adds: CO₂ neutrality is on everyone's lips, but which companies are actually climate neutral? With our project, we want to help companies improve their efficiency and switch entirely to renewable energy so that offsetting remains the exception. We are testing in practice how ambitious climate protection targets set by politicians are, where obstacles arise and which adjustments need to be made.“

To motivate participation in the project, Dr. Jörg Reichert, CEO of Energiedienst, stated: „We have been producing green electricity since 1998. Energiedienst has been operating carbon neutrally since 2020. We want to share our experiences, but also further improve our carbon neutrality and further reduce the necessary compensation. In this project, we are developing new approaches for this. The project is also highly interesting for us because we want to help our customers become carbon neutral themselves with green electricity and heating and energy solutions.“ Electrical engineering manufacturer Phoenix Contact also wants to offer its users carbon-neutral products and is developing measures for this in the project: „Phoenix Contact has switched all German sites to green electricity. By the end of the year, all the group's sites worldwide should be operating carbon neutrally. By 2030, Phoenix Contact aims to become completely carbon neutral throughout its entire value and supply chains. In the project, we are developing a strategy for this, and the switch to green electricity plays a significant role,“ said COO Torsten Janwlecke.

Following workshops with the individual companies, upp works with them to develop bespoke climate neutrality strategies. Initial results from the project show that the companies are already successfully protecting the climate and are able to align themselves with ambitious targets such as the Science Based Targets. There are many examples of companies avoiding CO₂ emissions directly within their value chain or local environment: they use reusable packaging, reduce packaging film, offer cycle-to-work schemes and travel tickets, or donate photovoltaic systems to schools, nurseries and community clubs. In a pilot project, they are planning to replace natural gas with hydrogen to generate process heat. Alternatively, they account for their CO₂ savings using climate meters, where the measures are fed into a central database. The project supports them in accurately accounting for these savings so that they contribute towards their climate neutrality.