Carbon neutrality

Making our operations carbon neutral

Our objectives
  • Knowing our environmental impacts and working systematically to reduce them
  • Carbon neutral operations and solutions

Ponsse’s carbon footprint (Scope 1 and 2) has been reduced by more than 40 per cent since 2019 because we replaced mixed-source electricity with renewable hydropower. Our carbon footprint did increase slightly in 2021 (5,455 t CO2-eq) year-on-year. This change was proportional to the growth of our business, and our emission intensity remained unchanged (7.27 t CO2-eq/EUR million).

The majority of our carbon footprint is produced by vehicle use (58% in 2021), followed by purchased heating (15% in 2021) and the fuel consumption of our work equipment and forest machine test drives (13% in 2021). Geographically speaking, the highest emissions in 2021 were generated by our operations in Finland (33%), Russia (20%), and the USA (18%). Epec Oy, the group’s technology company, only produced 1.23 t CO2-eq in emissions.

Ponsse will prepare its carbon neutrality roadmap and percentage-based emission reduction targets in 2022. We will also define which Scope 3 emissions are relevant for our operations (product end use, component procurement, etc.).

Procurement and logistics

The greatest environmental impacts of Ponsse’s procurement and logistics are related steel manufacturing for PONSSE forest machines and component transportation. Steel and castings make up 82 per cent of the weight of forest machines. We calculate and dimension our machines’ structures to have the optimal ratio of steel and castings to workloads. Forest machines have a recycling rate of 97 per cent. 

We manage the environmental impacts of procurement by focusing our sourcing on Europe and Finland in particular. The majority of Ponsse’s direct suppliers and subcontractors are located in Finland, 75 per cent, and 22 per cent are located in other EU countries. More than 20 per cent of our subcontractors are located within 25 kilometres of our Vieremä factory, significantly reducing our transport emissions. 
 

Production

Production accounts for one third of Ponsse’s carbon footprint. Our production’s environmental impacts are related to energy and raw material consumption, the use of chemicals, and solvent emissions from surface treatments. We use certified hydropower for our production.

Water is used in our production processes only for washing pieces before surface treatment and washing machines after test drives, which also prevents the spread of invasive species. Our water consumption is proportional to our production volume, and our water consumption (14,946 m3) increased by 27 per cent year-on-year in 2021.

At the factory, we fill finished forest machines with light fuel oil or diesel fuel, according to the requirements of the customer and the country of destination. We have exclusively used renewable diesel in our production since 2020. Post-production machine testing produces emissions during transport and test drives due to fuel and oil consumption.