In the business year 2022/23, investments in environmentally relevant facilities stood at EUR 28.9 million, thus slightly exceeding the previous business year’s level (EUR 26.7 million). These investments served primarily to expand captive renewable energy production, boost energy efficiency, and further reduce emissions.
Environmental investments
In millions of euros
As early as in the business year 2021/22, voestalpine launched a Group-wide campaign to expand its own production of renewable energy. For one, this entails the installation of PV units on technically suitable building roofs and open areas; for another, the Group invests in both wind and hydropower facilities. The company also continues to push the installation of electric charging stations at its European locations.
Over and above the pronounced expansion of captive renewable energy generation, reductions in energy consumption are at the center of the divisions’ environmental projects. The High Performance Metals Division continually works to implement projects aimed at boosting energy efficiency. Just as the Group’s other divisions, it is also taking steps to lower the share of fossil fuels. The division’s Swedish plant, for example, substituted biogas for 30% of its total natural gas consumption and converted equipment such as furnaces from natural gas to electricity. In doing so, voestalpine is consistently pursuing its ambitious goal to bring about an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions at its Swedish plant by 2027/28. The division’s Brazilian entity also implemented important energy efficiency measures in connection with smelting and forging as well as the electric furnace in the business year ended.
It goes without saying that it is more difficult to raise remaining energy efficiency potential at the “conventional” crude steel production facilities. At the Donawitz (Austria) steel plant of the Metal Engineering Division, improvements in heat recovery will boost energy savings by 1,700 MWh annually. The optimized use of waste heat in the facility’s captive power plant and the resulting improvement in efficiency adds another 2,000 MWh of energy savings per annum. Many other steps have been taken to significantly boost the plant’s ability to generate renewable electricity from its own sources. For example, a PV system with an output of 1.36 MWp was installed in an external landfill; it has been feeding green electricity into the plant’s grid through a direct transmission line since October 2022. In the future, these 2,520 modules are forecast to deliver some 1.5 million kWh of solar electricity per year with the help of ten inverters for the production and processing companies at the Donawitz plant.
Furthermore, a PV system with an installed total output of 8 MWp was set up on the factory floor roof of the Metal Engineering Division’s seamless tube rolling mill in Kindberg, Austria; yet more units are planned for other factory buildings. As in other divisions too, operational and/or process-related steps have been taken to replace natural gas with electricity.
PV units were installed at various locations of the Metal Forming Division—especially in Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands— often using internally produced “iFix” type mounting systems.
Besides carrying out the preparatory work for the greentec steel program described in the “Climate Action” chapter, the Steel Division focused on energy efficiency, captive generation of renewable energy using expanded photovoltaics units as well as increases in the share of e-mobility for both intra-plant vehicular traffic and the charging infrastructure used by voestalpine’s employees.
The continued expansion of the division’s CO2-reduced product portfolio was one important focal point. voestalpine already started back in calendar year 2021 to offer all flat steel and heavy plate products manufactured at the Linz (Austria) plant in a greentec steel edition also. The CO2 footprint of these products has been lowered by some 10% thanks to the optimization of operating modes (for example, when scrap and reducing agents are utilized) and the use of renewable electricity. In addition to the automotive industry, steel produced in this manner is already being deployed by customers in facade construction, building technology, crane construction, or the heating and heat pump industry.
Austria’s largest legacy pollution clean-up proj- ect—“Altlast O76, Linz Coking Plant”—which was launched in calendar year 2012 was finally completed in the business year 2022/23.