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Environment
Metsä Board is on its way towards its 2030 sustainability targets Completely fossil free mills and more efficient use of energy and water. Metsä Board’s ambitious goals can have a positive effect on its customers’ value chains, too.
Alisa Kettunen, photos: Seppo Samuli and Metsä Group
F ossil fuels are used to produce 80 per cent of the world’s energy, and reducing their use is necessary to mitigate climate change. Minimizing the use of non-renewable energy sources also aims to ensure that there will be enough of them in the future. The sustainability targets must be ambitious to push for achieving results. Metsä Board aims to further im- prove its energy self-sufficiency and achieve fossil free production by the end of 2030. Currently, 87% of the energy used at Metsä Board mills is fossil free. “We have continuously reduced the share of fossil-based fuels in our energy production to minimise fossil-based carbon dioxide emissions and completely eliminate them in the coming years,” says Matti Korhonen , Project Manager at Metsä Board. When calculating the environmental impacts of the en- tire production and supply chain, Metsä Board’s opera- tions have a direct impact on its customers’ carbon foot- prints, too: as Metsä Board reduces its carbon footprint, the companies that use its paperboards as raw materi- al can also reduce their raw material emissions and be- come more competitive. “Our customers carefully monitor their own carbon footprint calculations and require us to continuous- ly improve in matters such as the reduction of fos- sil-based emissions from our operations. Our clear
long-term plans assist our customers to achieve their emission targets when using our paperboards”, says Korhonen. Similarly, Metsä Board carefully monitors the emis- sions of its supply chain’ and logistics, which include the emissions from raw materials brought to its mills and those of the products they produce. “Our goal is to use only fully fossil free raw materials as well as packaging materials by end of 2030. Metsä Board participates annually in the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), where the reported emissions are broken down into emissions from fuels in our own operations (Scope 1), emissions from purchased energy (Scope 2) and emissions from the value chain (Scope 3). The first two categories are already in quite good shape, and we are now focusing more on reducing the emissions from the value chain.” Energy efficiency also means cost-effectiveness In addition to phasing out fossil fuels, Metsä Board aims to improve its energy efficiency by 10 per cent and re- duce its use of process water per tonne of production by 35 per cent compared to 2018 by the end of 2030. Water use is also directly linked to energy efficiency, because heating and pumping the water in operations consume a lot of energy.
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