Environmental operations

Aiming for a smaller environmental footprint

Developing our environmental efficiency is a continuous process. Sustainable use of resources underpins the long-term success of our business. A global operating environment brings opportunities and risks that we must recognize throughout our value chain.

The environmental impacts of our own operations consist mainly of energy consumption, atmospheric emissions, water consumption and waste generation. These impacts are created through operational activities in our manufacturing sites, research centers, laboratories and service centers. We also have processes to follow and targets to reduce the indirect environmental impacts of the external activities such as procurement and logistics.

We have ambitious CO2 reduction targets

We have ambitious CO2 emission reduction targets for our own operations: we are targeting net zero emissions by 2030. In logistics, we target a 20% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2025 from 2019 baseline. We also aim to reduce our water consumption by 15% per employee in water-scarce locations and to reduce the volume of waste sent to a landfill by 90% by 2030 (both compared to 2021).

Achieving net-zero CO2 emissions by 2030 will mainly result from equipment electrification, using renewable energy sources, and optimizing the energy, water consumption and waste efficiency of individual production processes. Our long-term goal is to switch heating systems from fossil fuels to electricity. In our foundries, we are working to find alternatives to natural gas and LPG.

To reach the net-zero goal, we are actively pursuing decarbonization initiatives across our operations. These efforts primarily involve reducing reliance on carbon-based energy sources within Metso’s own facilities by:

Optimizing processes at its manufacturing sites by reducing energy consumption and improving overall efficiency
Electrification of equipment, especially by choosing cleaner energy alternatives
Purchasing energy from low-carbon or carbon-free sources

Implementing energy savings actions is a good way of driving emissions reductions and we encourage all our employees to come up with suggestions for savings actions. These environmental projects are our leading actions related to energy, CO2, water and waste that help minimize the harmful environmental impact of our own operations, logistics and supply chain. Implementing these projects help increase our eco-efficiency and reduce our overall environmental footprint, all while achieving cost savings as well.

Water and waste in our own operations

We have targets in place for all our sites to reduce water use and waste to landfill. We are committed to reducing water consumption in our own operations in water-scarce locations and to fulfilling all local environmental legislation requirements for water consumption and effluent quality management in accordance with local environmental permits.

Several of our locations are situated in water-scarce areas in India, China, Chile and Mexico. Each location has water management action plans in place to decrease water consumption. Process developments at our sites and the adoption of new technologies reduces water use and increases water recycling in the production process, decreasing the need to withdraw more raw water.