Let’s start with the uncomfortable truth, climate change is happening, and the automotive industrial network is one of the main industries contributing to greenhouse gas emissions.
SKF is an energy intensive business – directly using energy, mainly in the form of electricity and gas, in its operations around the world. In addition, SKF utilizes materials, predominantly steel, and services which can be energy and carbon intensive – such as transports and raw material in production and processing. The combined impact of these direct and indirect energy uses (scope 1, 2 and 3 upstream) generates an excess of over two million metric tons of CO2e per year. This figure would however be significantly higher were it not for the actions SKF has taken to reduce both energy and carbon intensity. In 2000, we were one of the first companies to start to report and set climate targets. Acting on energy and material efficiency improvements and by switching to renewable energy, SKF is targeting decarbonizing its operations by 2030 and reaching net zero emissions throughout the value chain, by 2050. Those targets are SBTi approved.
To drive the decarbonization journey, we have to quantify how much emissions are embedded in our products in order to drive actions and compare alternatives to reduce them. SKF has in portfolio different tools that have been developed to calculate the footprint of our products. These tools permit to compare different scenario and drive our customers towards more sustainable solutions. SKF is able to run emission analysis at different level, from simple methods, based on publicly available data, to more complex calculation that are using mainly primary data.
In the transportation segment, the impact on emissions during use phase is and remains a major area of focus. The market is progressively moving toward zero tailpipe emissions vehicles, and our products play a key role in increasing vehicle autonomy through ultra low friction features.