Environment & climate

Cleaner environment has long been a part of Novozymes' core strategy. We continuously strive to minimize the environmental footprint of our operations and that of our suppliers and customers, through focus on energy, CO2, and water efficiency.

Strategy

At Novozymes, we want to protect the environment and natural resources by using environmentally friendly processes based on biological processes. We want to minimize our consumption of raw materials, water, and energy, and to effectively control emissions from our production. Our environmental strategy consists of the following:

Minimizing environmental impact strategy

Novozymes strives to minimize our environmental impact by continuously decoupling business growth from resource consumption, improving production efficiency. We have set targets for resource efficiency with regard to energy and water. Read more here.

Climate strategy

Novozymes is committed to reducing CO₂ emissions and to increasingly being part of the solution to the world’s climate change problems. Novozymes' climate strategy incorporates assessment of the complete life cycle of our products from the extraction of raw materials to the use of our products. The strategy's main areas of focus are (a) opportunities for exploiting the potential of our products to reduce CO₂ emissions in our customers' application of our products, and (b) reducing the CO₂ emissions related to our own activities. See Novozymes' position on global warming.

Our climate strategy has four perspectives:

Supplier perspective: We will reduce our carbon footprint and our sensitivity to changes in energy and GHG emission markets. Visit the interactive platform outlining initiatives in our own production, and with respect to customers and suppliers: Reducing our environmental footprint.
Customer perspective: We will increase the energy-saving potential of our technology to increase customers’ demand for our products. Read more about the proven environmental benefits of our products.
Society perspective: We will position our application of biotechnology as a key to energy efficiency and reduction of GHG emissions. Read more about our sustainable solutions.
The Novozymes perspective: We will strive for a continuous improvement in our energy and CO₂efficiency in a Novozymes perspective worldwide.

Initiatives & activities

Partnerships on sourcing renewable electricity: In Denmark Novozymes has committed itself to purchase electricity from the off-shore wind farm Horns Rev II covering our entire electricity consumption in Denmark by 2012. Our off take will represent just over 30% of the total production from the wind farm.

Transport CO₂efficiency: Novozymes discloses data on CO₂ emissions deriving from transport broken down by truck, ship, and air transport.

CO₂ emissions from business travel activities: Novozymes submits travel data from most flights on a global level. Visit the Carbon Disclosure Project for Novozymes' latest response (Metric tons of CO₂ emissions in 2009: 7435).

Management system & guidelines

Novozymes will maintain an open dialogue with our stakeholders and report annually on our environmental performance. We subscribe to international conventions and support global voluntary initiatives. Please see our commitments. For Novozymes’ overall commitment to environmental aspects, please refer to Novozymes’ environment and bioethics policy.

Environmental sustainability is anchored within the Executive Management of Novozymes via the Sustainability Development Board (SDB). SDB develops and implements the overall strategy on environmental performance and climate change. Moreover, Novozymes has a central Environmental Services unit and a number of decentralized units linked to production sites. Efforts on environmental performance are coordinated in the Novozymes Environmental Forum (NEF).

Novozymes conducts LCAs on all products, evaluating positive and negative environmental impacts throughout their life cycle. Please refer to Novozymes’ LCA studies. In order to further promote the CO₂ reduction potential of our products in the pipeline, all new discovery and development projects in R&D must pass through a "pipeline LCA". Pipeline LCAs are based on assumptions concerning the production of the enzyme together with its impacts and effectiveness during use.

All Novozymes' enzyme-producing sites are certified according to ISO 14001 in order to verify that our products are produced with a minimum of impact on the environment. Furthermore, Novozymes welcomes and is in compliance with the new European regulation REACH as Novozymes strives to substitute highly dangerous chemicals with sustainable enzymatic or biological solutions, while ensuring safety of use.