Holmen – Iggesund – joins Carbon Performance Leadership Index
The Holmen Group, which includes Iggesund Paperboard, has been selected to join the Carbon Performance Leadership Index (CPLI), a list of companies at the forefront of climate change performance.
The index is compiled by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), an independent, not-for-profit organisation that holds the largest collection globally of self-reported climate change data, and which is working to drive greenhouse gas emission reduction. CDP represents 655 institutional investors with US$78 trillion in assets.
Holmen is the only Swedish company to make the list this year.
Each year CDP asks companies around the world to report on their emissions, their goals for reducing them, and their assessment of a range of risks and opportunities related to climate change. The companies are then ranked on their climate change transparency, with the best disclosers joining CDP’s Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index (CDLI).
This year’s evaluation gave Holmen high marks for its climate strategy and for how it reports its climate-related data. As a result, Holmen is now included in the CDLI.
In addition, Holmen is the only Swedish company also to be included in the CPLI. The aim of this index is to make it easier for investors to identify companies which work in a responsible and developmental way with economic, environmental and social issues.
“It’s a great honour to be included in this list,” said Lars Strömberg, director of sustainable and environmental affairs at Holmen. “This is the result of lengthy and patient efforts to reduce our fossil carbon dioxide emissions and also to make our work more and more transparent.”
As an example of Holmen’s work, Strömberg points to the large-scale emission reductions that have already been achieved and that are planned at Holmen’s business unit Iggesund Paperboard. During the past two years, about €350 million has been invested to minimise carbon dioxide emissions at Iggesund’s mills atIggesund,Sweden, andWorkington,England.
“The Workington mill is particularly interesting because overnight we will switch our energy source from 100 per cent fossil fuel to 100 per cent biofuel,” Strömberg said. “And it’s especially noteworthy that such a huge step is being taken by a large industrial processing company.”
Holmen’s 2010 annual report was recently selected as the leading annual report inSweden. The award justification highlighted Holmen’s successful integration of its sustainability report within the regular annual report.
“We have all the conditions in place to continue being highly ranked by external assessments of our operations,” Strömberg said. “We use a renewable raw material and manufacture products which at their end of life can go straight into the world’s most widespread recycling system – recycled paper and board. The forest industry has all the prerequisites for being one of the most environmentally sustainable industrial sectors.”
