Global building industry leader Kingspan has today published its inaugural “Planet Passionate” Sustainability Report, reviewing the first year of progress in the 10-year strategy it launched in December 2019.
The report outlines Kingspan’s industry-leading decarbonisation programme, which targets a reduction in manufacturing carbon (CO2e) emissions to as close to zero as technically possible, together with halving carbon intensity in its primary supply chain.
In the first year of its strategy, Kingspan met the goal it set in 2011 to achieve Net Zero Energy by 20201 the first leg of its journey to decarbonise. Now the primary focus is on absolute decarbonisation of both its own operations (Scope 1 and 2 emissions) and its suppliers (Scope 3 emissions).
In 2020 Kingspan reduced emissions from operations by 5.2%, a first step towards net zero carbon manufacturing by 2030 with the intention of reducing absolute emissions to the lowest possible level. This will require transformation of Kingspan’s processes across its existing 166 manufacturing sites while supporting newly acquired businesses to decarbonise as quickly as possible.
Kingspan has also committed by 2030 to reduce the carbon intensity of its primary raw materials by 50%. This will reduce the embodied carbon in Kingspan’s products and further enhance the significant carbon savings that Kingspan products already deliver by reducing energy consumption in buildings. Insulation products sold by Kingspan in 2020 will save an estimated 164m tonnes of CO2e over their lifetime.
Kingspan has also been at the forefront of green finance, issuing the largest ever corporate Green Private Placement to raise €750m in September 2020 which will be used to support its mission of accelerating a net-zero-emissions built environment with advanced insulation and building envelope solutions. The company also raised a further €50m Green Loan to fund specific Planet Passionate initiatives.
Planet Passionate is made up of 12 ambitious targets, addressing the impact of Kingspan’s business operations and manufacturing on four key areas of energy, carbon, circularity and water.
