Our Environmental Responsibility

In our core business, we contribute to environmental sustainability by developing renewable energy facilities. Environmental protection is natural for us and we work continuously to reduce our carbon footprint.

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.

Climate

Helping to combat climate change is fundamental to our business concept by creating opportunities to invest in renewable energy. Wind and solar power uses renewable resources and helps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to air, land and water. However, the establishment of wind turbines, solar panels and batteries is not carbon-neutral.

The manufacturing and construction phase is the greatest contributor to Eolus’s carbon footprint. Emissions come from, for example, manufacturing, transportation, logging, road construction and the casting of foundations for wind turbines. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions in all phases of our projects is a material sustainability topic for Eolus and we intend to work more systematically with that issue as we move forward, both in our own activities and when specifying supplier requirements. We are also working actively with measuring our own emissions in scope 1, 2 and 3. Read more about this in our sustainability report.

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 business makes a vital contribution to reducing negative impacts. Our aim is always to avoid impacts on ecosystems and take actions to mitigate potential effects. Some concrete examples is when we on a voluntary basis have taken actions to strengthen biodiversity by constructing ponds for frogs, restoring ditches and setting up birdhouses in our project areas.

To protect and strengthen land and sea biodiversity has been identified as a material sustainability topic for Eolus and will therefore be one of several focus areas during the coming year. We are participating in project CLImB (Changing Land use Impact on Biodiversity) and have an ongoing cooperation with the Baltic Sea Action Group (BSAG), a non-profit organization that is taking action to protect and restore the marine ecosystem in the Baltic Sea. We are also working on formulating a biodiversity strategy, set measurable targets and integrate these issues into our project model more clearly.

Resource use and circularity

Eolus has a key role to play in the transition to a circular economy and we strive to include a life cycle approach in our decisions. When a wind power or solar farm reaches the end of its technical and economic life, it can be dismantled. The site can then either be used for new electricity generation with new facilities, or used for other purposes. A wind turbine is composed of around 85% steel and iron, which can now be re-used or recycled. The largest challenge is the rotor blades, which are mainly composed of fiberglass and thermoset composites, material that is difficult to recycle cost and energy-efficiently. To drive industry development, Eolus plays an active role in the Swedish Wind Energy Association’s Sustainability Council, and collaborates with industry colleagues to drive development in the field, where progress has been made in the most recent years.