Corporate responsibility: Voith publishes Sustainability Report 2022

In the 13th issue of the annual Voith Sustainability Report, Voith provides information on its sustainability activities and progress in fiscal 2021/22. “We want to make a verifiable contribution to the sustainable development of the economy and society. To this end, we are making our actions transparent and traceable through comprehensive reporting,” explains Dr. Toralf Haag, CEO Voith Group, commenting on the publication of the new Voith Sustainability Report. As a family-owned company, Voith feels a special obligation to handle resources responsibly and avoid environmental risks.

The Sustainability Report now published shows that the measures taken in recent years are having an impact. For example, energy consumption was reduced by 34% compared with the benchmark year 2011/12, freshwater extraction fell by 44 %, and waste volume declined by 38 %. This means that for fiscal 2021/22, the company not only achieved its goals but slightly exceeded them. Voith has committed to further reducing these figures by fiscal 2026/27, namely by 12.5 % in the case of energy consumption and by 5% each with respect to water use and waste volume.

When it comes to climate protection, Voith also remains on the right track. By fiscal 2021/22, the company has managed to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by around 40 % – from 142,464 tons in the previous year to 86,471 tons. These figures refer to direct and indirect GHG emissions resulting from processes at Voith facilities (= Scope 1 and Scope 2). The reduction resulted primarily from measures taken to improve energy efficiency as well as the increase in the proportion of renewable energies in the Voith electricity mix, which went up from the previous year’s level of 38 % to its current value of 80 %. Having achieved its target of net climate-neutral operation at the beginning of 2022, Voith’s overarching goal is to reduce GHG emissions to a minimum by fiscal 2049/50.

The new figures show that Voith has also performed well in the area of occupational safety. As far back as 2009, Voith had enshrined the reduction of the number and severity of accidents into its corporate objectives. In the 2021/22 reporting year, a strong decline in the number of work accidents was recorded, namely from 79 in the previous year to 61. This resulted in a very good frequency rate of 1.6 (= number of work accidents per million hours worked). The severity rate (= number of hours lost per million hours worked) also fell in the last fiscal year.

Voith not only reports on the improvements in its own sustainability performance but also on how Voith products and services help its customers achieve their sustainability goals. For example, Voith Hydro is shaping the future with hydropower and is thus making an important contribution worldwide to a stable, low-emission electricity supply. In the paper industry, Voith Paper is setting standards for resource-conserving paper production and, through its continuous R&D, is leveraging the necessary potential to reduce the carbon footprint of this sector. Voith Turbo is supporting the climate-friendly mobility of the future through innovative and increasingly more efficient drive systems and solutions.