Sustainability
Energy use and renewable electricity
How we’re making the switch to more sustainable operations
We’re focused on driving continuous energy efficiency and transitioning to 100% renewable electricity across all our sites globally. This will have a significant impact on our ambition of reducing our carbon emissions in our own operations by 50% by 2030.
To underline our commitment in this area, we’ve aligned our own sustainability ambitions with the Paris agreement, which aims to limit global warming and ensure that global temperature rise does not exceed 1.5˚C above pre-industrial levels.
Our ambition is to reduce carbon emissions for the whole value chain by 50% by 2030 (baseline 2018). This will apply to the company’s own operations, as well as its partners, such as customers and suppliers. The ambition were officially validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) in September 2021. AkzoNobel is the first paints and coatings company to set science-based sustainability ambitions by announcing carbon reduction ambitions for the full value chain.
In 2017, we already joined the RE100 initiative. RE100 is a collaborative initiative uniting the world's most influential businesses committed to 100% renewable electricity – developed by the international non-profit organization The Climate Group in partnership with CDP (formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project).
Our ambitions
- 50% reduction of carbon emissions by 2030 for our own operations*
- 50% reduction of carbon emissions by 2030 for the full value chain*
- 20% reduction of our energy consumption by 2030*
- 100% renewable electricity in our own operations by 2030
- Carbon neutral by 2050
Our progress (2025)
- 47% reduction in carbon emissions (own operations)*
- 69% renewable electricity in our own operations
- 84 locations are using 100% renewable electricity
- 40 sites using solar panels as a supplementary source of energy
- 100% renewable electricity in Europe since January 2022 and North America since January 2023
- 10% improvement in energy efficiency
- CDP A score
Our approach
Sustainability is in everything we do. We focus on tangible initiatives we can truly influence as a paints and coatings company. How do we do this? Below are our three key levers for decarbonization:
1. Energy efficiency – increasing the energy efficiency in manufacturing by improved metering and benchmarking to drive performance improvement. Upgrading assets to recover waste heat and replace fossil fuel heating. Production footprint optimization by relocation from less efficient to more efficient sites.
2. Renewable electricity – we maximize our energy from on-site solar panels and we are contracting additional renewable electricity via power purchase agreements (PPAs). We continue to look for opportunities in mature markets, while expanding the procurement of renewable electricity certificates in regions suchs as North Asia to achieve 100% renewable electricity in 2030.
3. Energy transition – To reduce our fossil fuel consumption, we are carrying out various energy transition projects, e.g. heat pumps to replace fossil fuel heating with natural gas, and upgrading chillers and air compressors with heat recovery units.
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