Carbon Footprint Calculation in the Wind Energy Sector
Customer: Nordex Group
Category: Energy
Date: February 2022
The Nordex Group, headquartered in Hamburg, has been active in the onshore wind business for more than 35 years and has been one of the world’s largest manufacturers of wind turbines since its merger with Acconia Windpower in 2016.
As a manufacturer of innovative onshore wind turbines, Nordex is helping to continuously increase the share of renewable energies in the global energy mix. However, the company is not satisfied with this and has set out to become a sustainable company in all areas. In order to determine the impact of the company’s activities on the climate, the Nordex Group has drawn up a company-wide Corporate Carbon Footprint (CCF) together with DFGE – Institut für Energie, Ökologie und Ökonomie.
“It was very important for us to have our environmental impact and the accompanying Corporate Carbon Footprint carried out and evaluated by a renowned institute with scientific experience and distinctive expertise. DFGE was a very good partner who supported us all the way, from the methodology to the visualization of the results.”
Challenge
The climate-relevant emissions generated by business activities in companies and their locations are increasingly becoming an important corporate indicator and form the basis of a sound climate strategy.
Hurdles in the calculation are often the choice of system boundaries and calculation standards as well as adequate collection and preparation of input data, especially if the company has different locations or a complex product. The latter was also one of the central challenges for Nordex.
Solution
The first step was to provide Nordex with a Data Management Plan to collect the required data in a structured manner. By applying the scientific top-down approach, DFGE was then able to quickly determine which emission sources receive a large weighting in the overall result. This enables the effort of collecting different input data to be related to their emission weighting, thus keeping the time spent on Nordex’s side as low as possible.
With these valuable insights, data collection can be further optimized in subsequent years. In addition, DFGE was able to identify areas in which data quality should be improved, for example by increasing the size of a sample or querying specific supplier data. Thus, the CCF can be continuously optimized in an iterative process.
Result
The calculation of the CCF provides Nordex with a deeper understanding of its emission sources and enables the identification of CO2e hotspots. Thus, the CCF represents an important basis for the company-wide climate strategy. Based on the emission balance, long-term reduction targets, for example science-based targets, as well as efficient emission reduction measures can be defined. DFGE looks forward to continuing to accompany Nordex on this path.
