Our Environmental Responsibility
Our core business is contributing to the achievement of environmental sustainability, and we are working pro-actively to reduce the environmental impact of our day-to-day operations. Wind and solar power are resources that are constantly replenished and have a smaller impact on the environment compared with other energy sources.
We are responsible for how our operations impact the environment, and environmental issues are treated as a natural part of Eolus’s operations. We require all employees, consultants and subcontractors to take active environmental responsibility, and we are continually engaged in developing our own environmental efforts through minimizing the climate footprint of our own operations.
Read more in our Code of Conduct.
Climate
The climate is a fundamental part of Eolus’s business concept of creating opportunities to invest in renewable energy for a sustainable future. Wind and solar power use renewable resources and thus avoid CO2 emissions into the ground, the air and the water during the production phase. However, establishing wind and solar power is not climate neutral since emissions occur during manufacture, transportation, establishment of roads and felling forests, all of which have an impact on the climate. Currently, we are working on developing how we measure CO2 emissions and we have implemented a system for reporting and processing sustainability data that will facilitate strategic and systematic measurement, monitoring and data management.
We are initially focused on measuring our Scope 1, 2 and 3 CO2 emissions in accordance with the GHG Protocol. Scope 1 emissions are our direct GHG emissions (from vehicles, for example) and Scope 2 emissions are our indirect emissions (from purchased energy, for example). Scope 3 emissions are all indirect emissions from sources not controlled by the company (in our value chain and on business travel, for example). We have started measuring the emissions of our Swedish operations and will eventually measure emissions in all of our markets. We will create a structure for measuring emissions in our supply chain in 2022, and create an action plan and set targets for the reduction of our CO2 emissions prior to 2023.
Biodiversity
Despite all the technological advances that modern society offers, humanity is without a doubt entirely dependent on a healthy, living ecosystem. Since climate change is one of the greatest threats to biodiversity, our core operations constitute an extremely vital contribution to reducing negative impact. The development of new energy facilities is governed by a rigorous permit process with strict requirements for assessing the climate impact of each individual project, where biodiversity is an integral aspect to take into account.
Our objective is always to avoid an impact on the ecosystem and to take measures to mitigate potential effects. Concrete examples include voluntarily strengthening biodiversity by building frog ponds, restoring drainage ditches and setting up nesting boxes at our project sites. Eolus will develop this area as well going forward, and we also plan to set measurable targets for biodiversity.
Circular Economy
Eolus has a key role to play in the transition to a circular economy. We strive to include a life-cycle perspective in our decisions. When a wind turbine or solar farm has reached the end of its technical and economic life, they can be dismantled. The land or site can then either be used for new electricity generation with new facilities or used for other purposes. However, the production of components for wind or solar power are not climate neutral, and we are working together with the industry to safeguard the responsible use – and re-use – of all resources. Eolus participates in several industry organizations and is active on the Swedish Wind Energy sustainability council, whose purpose is to jointly identify and pursue short- and long-term commitments to reduce environmental impact throughout the supply chain.
As part of the process to systematize our approach to sustainability, we are working to expand requirements specifications for and following up on the sustainability practices of our suppliers. Read more about these efforts in our Sustainability Report.