At Beckers, we set high goals on our environmental performance, continuously exploring new opportunities for energy management and resource efficiency. We also believe it is important to understand the extent of our contribution to climate change and identify related risks and opportunities.
Climate change is one of the focus areas in our sustainability strategy and we systematically work to reduce our carbon emissions. Using the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, a greenhouse gas inventory analysis at our facilities, we have determined that the biggest sources of emissions at our company are:
Our key emission intensity indicator is tonnes CO2e per tonne product. In 2022 0.34 tCO2e was emitted per tonne of paint produced, which is an increase of 17.2 percent compared with the previous year. This is a reduction of 15 percent compared with our base year 2013. The total increase is the effect of reduced production, while it takes time for operational activities to respond. The results for 2022 show a 43 percent absolute reduction in emissions in scopes 1 and 2 combined, compared to the base year 2013. We also continue to measure and target VOC emissions from all our production sites. Thanks to a combination of activities such as low-solvent cleaning systems, solvent recirculation and on-site distillation, we could reduce our air emissions in 2022.
Reducing the waste associated with the production and sale of our products remains a key area of focus. Our integrated and structured approach tackles all aspects of waste reduction – from product and packaging design through to coming up with innovative ways to ensure that any waste produced is either re-used or responsibly disposed of.
Year-on-year results show that the amount of waste per ton of paint produced is decreasing. The reasons are several: better planning, not overproducing, introducing storage tanks for incoming raw materials, reuse of packaging materials, cryogenic technology, recirculating cleaning solvent and reusing obsolete paint. In 2022 we again reduced our landfill waste significantly.
To find out more about our performance on waste and other environmental indicators, please read the 2022 Sustainability Report.
Energy intensity measured as energy used per ton of coatings produced is one of our pivotal environmental KPIs.
Since we started measuring our energy use, we have shown a consistent increase in the fraction of renewable energy consumption from the total energy we use. We aim to further advance this trend in the coming years, continuing the transition to renewable energy across our business, especially with renewable electricity. After the first installation of 300 solar panels at our Malaysia site in 2017, many other sites started producing renewable electricity with their own solar photovoltaic energy systems so that we already reached our 2030 goal of 70% renewable electricity in 2022. Our new goal that was set in 2022, is now to reach 70% renewable energy by 2030.
To find out more about our energy performance, please read the 2022 Sustainability Report.