SDG 7
Afforable and clean Energy
Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.
Challenge
Nowadays, the availability of electrical energy is indispensable for almost all areas of daily life. These include, for example, industry, medicine, education, agriculture, infrastructure, communications and high technology. Participation in social life is also becoming increasingly dependent on electricity (smartphone, internet, social media...).
To this day, fossil fuels such as coal, oil or gas are important sources of electricity generation worldwide, but their combustion produces large amounts of greenhouse gases that contribute greatly to global warming and pollution.
Since the Paris Agreement (global climate agreement) at the latest, many countries have been in the process of increasing the share of renewable energies in their electricity mix.
Examples of our contibution
- Around 35 percent of Evonik's externally purchased electricity worldwide already comes from renewable sources. By 2030, we want to convert our external electricity procurement to 100 percent green electricity.
- In Europe, Asia, North and South America, more than 50 sites currently source or generate sustainable energy. This corresponds to a saving of around 410,000 tonnes of CO2 per year.
- At our European sites, we will become much less dependent on fossil fuels in the future. After we were able to conclude a long-term green electricity purchase agreement (PPA2) with EnBW as our partner in 2022 with delivery starting in 2026 from the new 960 megawatt (MW) He Dreiht offshore wind farm to be built, further PPAs followed in December 2023. Starting in 2025, Evonik will purchase the electricity generated from Vattenfall over a ten-year contract period from around 120 MWp3 of installed capacity, which will come from two new photovoltaic sites to be built in Schleswig-Holstein. Furthermore, from 2028, RWE will also supply us with approx. 37.5 GWh of green electricity annually over 10 years from the Kaskasi offshore wind farm, which was commissioned at the beginning of 2023.
- In addition to green electricity, Evonik is also growing in importance of biomethane as a substitute for fossil natural gas. Evonik is already relying entirely on renewable energies for its production in Schörfling am Attersee (Austria). Only green electricity from wind, hydropower or biomass flows into our production facility for the SEPURAN® membranes. Since the beginning of 2022, the site has also covered 100 percent of its gas requirements with biomethane from regional production.
Our Goals
Reduce absolute Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 25 percent between 2021 and 2030.
Reduce absolute Scope 3 emissions by 11 percent between 2021 and 2030.
Reduction of absolute and specific energy consumption by 5 percent each in the period from 2020 to 2025.