Reducing carbon emissions is a key aspect of our sustainability strategy, and we aim to be a technological leader in this area as well. This is why we’ve demonstrated that hydrogen can be used in production as a fuel gas without any issues, even with technologically demanding materials. We leverage our technology expertise in development partnerships with our suppliers to help reduce the product carbon footprint. Since all measures taken to reduce emissions can only be used by our customers if they can be reliably verified, however, we were the first company in the industry to implement a validated process for calculating the product carbon footprint of every single material variation.
Transparency thanks to validated carbon footprints
Carbon footprint for each material grade
We recognized the need to measure, document, and allocate carbon emissions to individual material versions at a very early stage. Thoroughly tracking, aggregating, and documenting all carbon emissions generated by a steel coil from the time the crude steel is produced by our suppliers to the time the finished product leaves our factory gates is a complex task. A team of specialists from Quality Management, Energy Management, Materials Technology, Purchasing, Controlling, Production Engineering, and IT has developed a process for this “cradle-to-gate” approach which is fully integrated into our ERP system. As a result, we are now capable of determining the carbon footprint of every customer specification with the help of this system. We’ve had the calculation methodology and system we developed for this validated by a certification company (GutCert).
This data transparency provides our customers with a reliable basis for making decisions on how to shape their own path toward a lower-carbon future. The reductions in the carbon footprint that we agree upon can be reliably verified and further used in their own systems. That is technological progress as we understand it.
