Environmental operations

Aiming for a smaller environmental footprint

Developing our environmental efficiency is a continuous process. Sustainable use of resources underpins the long-term success of our business. A global operating environment brings opportunities and risks that we must recognize throughout our value chain.

The environmental impacts of our own operations consist mainly of energy consumption, atmospheric emissions, water consumption and waste generation. These impacts are created through operational activities in our manufacturing sites, research centers, laboratories and service centers. We also have processes to follow and targets to reduce the indirect environmental impacts of the external activities such as procurement and logistics.

We have ambitious CO2 reduction targets

We have ambitious CO2 emission reduction targets for our own operations: we are targeting net
zero emissions by 2030. In logistics, we target a 20% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2025 from 2019 baseline. We also aim to reduce our water consumption by 15% per employee in water-scarce
locations and to reduce the volume of waste sent to a landfill by 90% by 2030 (both compared to 2021).

Our solutions to reduce CO2 emissions include the extended use of renewable energy, environmental improvement actions in our production processes and facilities, and investments in own energy generation i.e. solar power systems and ground heat. We have more than tripled the number of solar panels at our sites compared to the beginning of 2021. Our long-term goal is to switch heating systems from fossil fuels to electricity. In our foundries, we are working to find alternatives to natural gas and LPG. In 2023, we completed almost 40 energy/ CO2 efficiency projects. In Brazil, we finalized a green-gas certificates initiative, aiming to reduce CO2 emissions from the use of natural gas. Going forward, we plan to expand the use of green-gas certificates in other countries as well.

In 2023, in addition to the energy-saving actions in our own operations, we improved the water efficiency of several of our production processes and reduced freshwater intake by, e.g., directing process overflow water to a local garden and utilizing condensation water from air conditioning for facility cleaning and plant watering.

Implementing energy savings actions is a good way of driving emissions reductions and we encourage all our employees to come up with suggestions for savings actions. These environmental projects are our leading actions related to energy, CO2, water and waste that help minimize the harmful environmental impact of our own operations, logistics and supply chain. Implementing these projects help increase our eco-efficiency and reduce our overall environmental footprint, all while achieving cost savings as well.

Biodiversity – understanding our impact

In 2023, we started assessing value chain impacts on biodiversity by completing an initial biodiversity diagnostic. Biodiversity loss affects Metso’s value chain in different ways depending on individual geographic locations, but the findings of the assessment were in line with our current sustainability approach – reducing our greenhouse gas emissions and water use and using Planet Positive products and services in customer operations are all useful ways to address biodiversity challenges.

Most of our biodiversity footprint is through our customer’s operations. Here, our solutions in tailings treatment and dry tailings stacking, process water treatment solutions, stockpile remediation, energy-, water- and chemical-efficient processing solutions for old tailing stockpiles and finely ground ore treatment solutions will play a crucial role in helping reduce biodiversity loss in Metso’s customer industries.

As a responsible partner, we also aim to address biodiversity loss prevention and mitigation actions taken by our supply chain and customer base. Metso does not support illegal mining activities or activities that violate national or international nature conservation laws and regulations.

Planet Positive approach

The biggest environmental impacts of Metso’s solutions are generated during customer processes. Central to our sustainability efforts is our Planet Positive offering. These are products that are significantly more energy or water efficient than the market standard, and help our customers cut their CO2 emissions or achieve any of their other sustainability priorities such as reducing pollution. Read more from Planet Positive offering and innovations.