Reduce, reuse, recycle: How to make decarbonisation good for business

Sustainability, energy efficiency and zero emissions are words on everyone’s lips. 

And while the companies that don’t make environmental efforts get called out, or those that try to pretend, accused of greenwashing, is there a business case to encourage companies to get on board?

In this episode of The Big Question, Hannah Brown sits down with Kim Fausing, CEO of Danfoss to discuss how they’ve made going green good for business.

Danfoss has focused on optimising its infrastructure as its first step towards decarbonisation. Although they are an engineering giant, they say their approach is achievable for all sizes of business.

“We don't do any projects that have a payback time of more than three years,” Kim explained. 

A very simple change that they have implemented across their sites is the use of variable speed drives. 

“Most electrical motors that are in all sorts of industrial applications are on or off. So it means either they run 100% or they're stopped 100%. That's very inefficient. 

“If you combine it with a variable speed drive, Europe could save €10bn just for that one single base application.”

It would also avoid around 12.5 - 14.1 tons of CO2e emissions - that equates to the footprint of about two million European citizens. 

This is just one of 200 projects Danfoss has in place to reduce its energy consumption that has reaped business rewards.

“We would not like to decarbonise and become not competitive,” Kim added.

Another great opportunity for Europe is the reuse of excess heat. 

As society becomes increasingly digitalised and the demand for data centres grows, so does the heat they churn out. By 2030, 53% of the world’s energy input will be wasted as excess heat.

For example, it’s projected that the heat produced from