Becoming a circular business by 2050
Circularity is one of the pillars of Eneco's One Planet plan. Our complex and resource-intensive value chain makes circularity a crucial focus for us. We are making substantial efforts to limit climate change by investing in the energy transition. However, this requires numerous materials and products to overhaul the existing energy infrastructure in a very short amount of time resulting in raw material scarcity for metals and minerals related to clean energy technology (wind, solar, batteries, etc.).As such, Eneco recognises the importance of adopting circular business practices to preserve resources, reduce waste and limit its contribution to climate change. We aim to improve circularity across our value chain, from raw material extraction and supplier production (material inflow) to construction, manufacturing, and end-of-life processing of our assets and products (material outflow).
Our aim is to start improving our circularity performance in the years ahead and step by step move towards our goal of becoming a fully circular business by 2050.
Our current status
At Eneco, circularity is still in its early stages compared to other sustainability topics, as it is for many of our peers. Our primary focus is on improving data availability and quality by establishing a system that calculates circularity metrics reflecting the material consumption, durability, recyclability, and repairability of our assets and products. This will enable us to understand, track and improve our performance. A key part of this is to source more accurate data for our assets and products directly from our suppliers. Working together with our value chain is not only important for sourcing data, but also for creating a circular business model, which depends on strong collaboration across the entire value chain.Circularity roadmap
We are currently developing a circularity policy and roadmap which will contain performance improvement strategies and actions. These will help us to reach our goal of becoming a fully circular business by 2050. The focus of this roadmap will be on those assets that consume the most materials and products in their realisation, which are the wind, solar, heat, and commercial battery value chains.
Below are some concrete examples of actions we are taking while developing this roadmap:
- Lifetime extension – the process of extending the operational life of an asset beyond its originally intended lifespan. For now, the focus is on wind farms, which are designed to be safely operational for about 20 years but can be extended by refurbishing or replacing critical components. Eventually this process should be extended to other asset types as well.
- Recycling pilots – our material outflow and waste are currently minimal: most of our assets and products are still in their use phase. Once these will reach their end of life, waste and material outflow will become increasingly relevant and we expect this to increasingly become a strategic priority during the years ahead. To prepare for that, we are exploring how to make smarter use of materials through pilot projects that recycle pipes (district heating), operational waste, and wind turbine blades.
Our vision in the short term
We are currently focusing on data quality improvement, research and testing to inform our long-term policy and roadmap. The short-term aim is to calculate steerable metrics based on which we can set measurable targets. As part of our roadmap, we are developing a set of targets to guide and track progress along the way, which will be published in the coming year.