Only renewable energy

What is Södra’s energy policy? 

The majority of our energy has been renewable for a long time but we want to be even better. We aim to be self-sufficient on renewable energy to get control of both cost and climate impact from our energy consumption. The energy usage in our mills are 99% renewable today. Our target have been approved by Science Based Targets Initiative where we shall lower our emissions by 50% by 2030 (2020 base). We are also setting a target to be net zero by 2040. The target includes emissions from transportation and chemicals used in the process as well.

For how long have you been running on renewable energy? Was it a hard transition to make?

In some extend from the very beginning of our operations since part of the energy balance is recovered in the production process when we utilize all parts of the tree. The transition has been ongoing in a more strategic way since 2010 and the board took a decision to have complete fossil free energy consumption in our production in 2015. It is always hard to pick the apples in the top of the tree and the last parts have been harder to change to renewables.

How much renewable energy are you able to produce?

All our three mills today produce more electricity than they use. In total we produce almost 2 TWh of electricity, use 1,5 in our operations and are selling 0,5 TWh out to the grid. Additional to that we are using the residues from our sawmills and pulp mills as energy and are selling 5 TWh external in form of solid bioenergy to CHP plants, pellets, tall oil and bio-methanol.

To understand the size of this, you could say that we are heating every third house in Southern Sweden, producing the same amount of electricity as all solar panels in Sweden and selling out to the grid three times the usage of all BEV Cars.

Does your customer see the benefit of this? 

By being energy efficient, utilizing our resources at maximum and only using renewable energy our customers benefit by having a reliable producer with low CO2-emissions helping them reach their Net Zero targets.

What other work are you doing to improve energy efficiency?

We have an organization working only with efficiency with the target to be efficient in world class. Energy is one of their main topics. Every fourth year we are doing a mapping of our energy usage and setting targets and actions to reduce the energy consumption within selected areas during the coming years. The rationale behind four years period is to have a strategical horizon in the work to be able to work with different areas.