Foreword: Room for optimism
It’s early days in my new role and the road to climate mitigation is long and ambitious. But when it comes to at least some of our targets, I’m feeling optimistic. Our own emissions from our pulp mills are something we have been working with for a number of years. And the results are now showing with all three Södra pulp mills among the best mills in the world when it comes to low greenhouse gas emissions. It’s difficult to halve emissions if you’re already among the best in class, but that’s what we continue to aim for by 2030 and we’re on track. By 2026, our pulp production will be entirely free of fossil fuels.
Halving our indirect Scope 3 emissions, which include transport, is, of course, more difficult because we depend on the actions of our partners in the value chain, and maybe even more on political decisions within the European region.
When it comes to logistics, the challenges are undeniable: there are over six million diesel trucks on Europe’s roads, and it takes time for the big logistic companies to move towards greener technologies. Reducing Scope 3 emissions on a scale broad enough to help the world meet its net-zero targets will likely require not only new processes and technologies but also new kinds of collaboration with customers, suppliers, and stakeholders.
In the meantime, we act where we can. As an example, we replace two of our three time-chartered vessels by 2028. Larger vessels with more fuel-flexible engines will be an opportunity to introduce more biofuels for our shipments by sea. We also launched our Conscious Delivery offering as another path to reducing the carbon footprint of our pulp deliveries.
SBTi is an international initiative. Although 50 % of all companies which had set or committed to setting a science-based target were originally based in Europe, more than 7,000 companies businesses have now committed to setting targets within the SBTi framework. I’m hopeful that the target setting will continue to expand globally. We’re not there yet, so in the meantime, we rely on each other to share data and targets.
Our sustainability survey highlighted in this newsletter is one step towards procuring the information we need.
Knut Omholt, Climate Impact Engineer
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Subjects: Pulp