Climate and Circularity

Our primary focus has been on reducing our own emissions (Scope 1 and 2). The target was a 75% reduction in emissions from the 2021 baseline by 2025. We have already surpassed this goal, achieving an 80% reduction.

Our target is to reach 100% renewable electricity by 2028, while currently we are at 96%. Ensto’s factories in Finland, Estonia, and France use 100% renewable electricity, while in India the share of renewable electricity is currently around 40%. Solar panels installed at several sites already cover – depending on the location – up to 30% of electricity consumption, and the share is still growing. 

For the first time we have also calculated upstream emissions (Scope 3) from purchased goods and services, capital goods, fuel- and energy-related activities, transportation and distribution, and business travel for the year 2025.

Scope 3 emissions, primarily from purchased goods, materials, and transportation, represent over 90% of our total carbon footprint, making supplier engagement and material choices central to our approach.

Efforts focus on improving emissions data coverage and quality, integrating sustainability criteria into sourcing processes, and engaging suppliers in emissions reduction and energy transition.

This approach ensures that climate actions extend beyond own operations and contribute to broader system-level decarbonization.

Reducing waste to a minimum by reusing existing materials and products as long as possible is the essence of circular economy. Being a part of the critical infrastructure of society, Ensto’s products are of high quality, and they survive decades in harsh environmental conditions. 

In the future, emphasis will increasingly be put on new business models like services. A great example of this evolving business area is the refurbishment of overhead loadbreak switches (LBS) produced by Ensto in France. The LBS called Auguste is the only one on the market with the safe advantage of an embedded voltage transformer. Through refurbishment, LBS Auguste’s normal 25-year lifespan can be extended by another 20 years.

We have established in-house capabilities to produce Enviromental Product Declarations (EDPs) and carbon footprints for select products, adhering to ISO 14025 standards. This reflects our commitment to transparency and environmental responsibility.

Strategic data management development is ongoing simultaneously to enhance product claims data quality in declarations by supply traceability for robust carbon foot printing.

Innovating to create materials that replace harmful substances used in our products is an important part of our work on circularity. We actively participate in the development of lead- and SF6-free products together with our suppliers and scientific institutions. One of the materials being tested is lead-free brass, which is being developed for use in brass screws. As for SF6, our product development is testing an alternative gas mixtures for circuit breakers.

Besides innovations, we are researching and prototyping technologies that help distribution system operators (DSOs) reduce their CO2 emissions. Smart sensors and IOT provide accurate fault information from their network so that focused repair actions can be made without manual investigation. 

At Ensto, our aim is to reduce waste and promote circularity in our manufacturing plants. We have increased the shear, or recycling, reusing, recovering and composting part in our overall waste generation and have been able to reduce the landfill and energy waste part by a small amount.

We are continuously seeking ways to reduce waste generated in our manufacturing plants and also for our customers. To reduce the environmental impact of our packaging, we use as many recyclable materials as possible, such as brown corrugated board and enviromentally friendly filling. We also use less printing colors in our packaging.