In een op Interface gebaseerd nieuw industrieel model wordt optimaal met grondstoffen en energie uit hernieuwbare bronnen omgegaan Hiermee worden de productiekosten enorm verlaagd alsmede de met CO2-emissies gemoeide kosten. Als de hele Europese maakindustrie op dit model over zou gaan dan is hier een jaarlijkse besparing van € 100 biljoen mee te bereiken!
Engelstalige samenvatting:
The potential of the New Industrial Model for the whole of the European manufacturing sector is estimated to be:
• €100 billion p.a. profit before tax improvement from materials efficiency, energy efficiency and renewable energy – at a capex cost of €66 billion. This represents an average 9% increase in profit for the European manufacturing sector. Market share improvements and new product revenues add to this, but have not been included.
• 168,000 new skilled and mostly local jobs in energy efficiency and renewable energy.
• 1,200 MtCO 2e p.a. reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (equivalent to 14.6% of Europe’s total annual greenhouse gas emissions) from energy efficiency and use of renewable energy.
11% of the additional profits and 20% of the additional jobs and greenhouse gas reductions identified above for Europe could be achieved if the top 20 European manufacturers alone applied the New Industrial Model to their global operations.
This new industrial model decouples economic success from natural resource consumption. It goes beyond conventional thinking, which considers sustainability as a compliance activity and cost, to drive revenues and profits by integrating sustainability within a company’s core strategy. To drive the transition to the New Industrial Model, the most important catalyst is senior executive leadership. Strategy executives must also use their strategic, cross-boundary perspective to think through the application of the model for their organisation and build the business case for change. Staff engagement is a further enabler of the New Industrial Model.
Corporate actions that would accelerate the transition include:
• Committing to reducing material use by 5% per unit of production from current levels, reducing energy use
by 20% per unit of production from current levels and using 100% green energy by 2020.
• Asking suppliers to provide either Environmental Product Declarations or validated life cycle assessment data for their products/materials so that there is continual focus on reducing the environmental impact of raw materials and products.
• Rethinking products as to whether they could better meet customer needs and create additional value if they were more resource efficient or delivered in a different way (e.g. through servicising, remanufacturing, or shared usage).
Government also plays a vital role in the transition. Regulatory performance standards assist in driving non-labour resource efficiency. Temporary, declining financial support for renewable energy recognises the value for society of a decarbonised and more secure energy supply and the additional jobs that it provides. Governments could further assist the transition through:
• Shifting taxation from income/labour to virgin resource use and environmental damage.
• Mandating transparency of inputs and impacts e.g. creating a rating scheme to allow comparison of the
embodied energy in energy-intensive products such as steel and glass between different producers.
• Extending public procurement of products with high recycled content and renewable energy.
• Mandating energy efficiency implementation when an audit shows a payback period of three years or
less.
European manufacturers today face a range of financial, environmental and social challenges:
• Financial concerns include input price rises driven by supply constraints and resource security issues as
well as low cost competing products.
• Environmental issues include air quality, climate change and increasing demand for natural resources, which are increasingly being priced into the economy.
• Socially, Europe needs jobs growth to lift the quality of life of citizens and underpin consumer prosperity. These issues are converging. Companies are increasingly being held accountable for addressing these concerns by investors, customers and society – in an age where transparency and collaboration reward leadership and punish lack of action. If manufacturing continues its traditional approach of seeking profit improvements by cutting headcount and exploiting natural resource reserves, these challenges will become more acute.
However, these challenges also present opportunities for companies willing to take a new approach that
moves beyond treating environmental and social issue as an add-on or compliance activity. To date, only a few companies have accessed these opportunities in an integrated way. This paper presents an industrial model
to unlock the potential through a simple yet coherent approach (the ‘New Industrial Model’). The validity and power of this new model is demonstrated using Interface’s European operations as a case study (see Exhibit 2 for an overview of Interface’s European operations), providing hard numbers on the costs and benefits of the new model – including increased profits, new jobs created and reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This paper also quantifies the untapped opportunity represented by extending this new model to specific countries, to Europe as a whole and for the top 20 European manufacturers. Finally, the roles of CEOs, strategy executives, staff and government in driving the adoption of this new industrial model are discussed.