Munich, 20 November 2023 – Klüber Lubrication has won the European Responsible Care® Award presented annually by Cefic, the European Chemical Industry Council. The market leader for specialty lubricants was recognised in the category “Climate Neutrality” for its project “Climate Protection by Solvent Replacement” and for its Climate Action Plan.
The laudators particularly emphasized the ambitious concept, the occupational safety narrative, the well-structured climate plan, the fact, and figures provided and the clear elaborated communication with the employees.
Solvents with smaller climate impact
Thanks to new solvents in production, Klüber Lubrication has been able to significantly reduce its Scope 1 CO2eq emissions in recent years. The solvent-based share was still over 32,500 tonnes in 2019 but fell to 1,937 in 2022. This was also a major factor in enabling Klüber to over-achieve the company’s 2025 target of a 75 % reduction in CO2 emissions ahead of schedule in 2022 with a reduction of 76 %.
“We managed that through the close cooperation of Research and Development, Production and other departments”, explains Markus Hermann, sustainability manager of Klüber Lubrication. “By working together, a new substance was found in 2020 which not only delivers the required performance but also cleans more efficiently and protects our climate”. A kilogram of the solvent originally used in the production had a global warming potential of around 10,000 kilograms of CO2eq. With the new solvent, this impact was reduced to 55 kilograms of CO2eq.
Part of an ambitious Climate Action Plan
Whereas Klüber had emitted 48,953 metric tons of CO2eq in 2019, this figure was only 11,717 metric tons in the course of 2022. The reduction of 37,236 tons of CO2eq is equivalent to the annual emissions of 8,000 average global citizens (at an estimated 4.7 tons per capita). Klüber thus avoided environmental damage in the range of 8.8 Mill. €/year, based on damage costs of €237 per ton CO2eq as formerly assessed by the German Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt) for emissions caused in the year of 2022.
“In our cross-functional global sustainability team, our focus has been to reduce climate gas emissions as fast as possible”, say Markus Hermann. “Key success factors have been the exchange of solvents, also in our products, the switch to green electricity, energy audits, our long-term quest to increase energy efficiency - and our team spirit.” Hermann adds: “These significant reductions in our carbon footprint are small in comparison to the positive impact we create with our so-called ‘sustainability handprint’: We help our customers reduce their footprint in their production and products with our specialty lubricants and services, which lead to energy and CO2 savings, cost reductions, extended machine and component lifetimes, and numerous associated benefits. Klüber Lubrication has many exciting sustainability stories to share.”
Additional information on this year's Cefic Award can be found at https://cefic.org/media-corner/newsroom/26-initiatives-lead-the-eu-responsible-care-awards-in-the-transition-to-2050/.
Further details on Klüber Lubrication's climate targets and their implementation can be found in Klüber's sustainability report.
