Nokian Tyres has published a plan from Teppo Huovila, Nokian global vice president of quality and sustainability, detailing how the company plans to achieve its CO2 emissions reduction targets.
Nokian says it has already been working for over 10 years in order to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. The company says the rolling resistance of its tyres, which is one of the factors affecting fuel economy, has been reduced by an average of 8% from the 2013 level, and if the company chooses 2005 as the benchmark, the improvement has been approximately 20%. Factory CO2 emissions per tyre have been reduced by 44% between 2013 and 2019, Nokian adds.
The following encompasses Nokian’s plan, and the entirety of the piece can be found by clicking here:
“So far, we have been setting our own emission reduction targets for our operations and the products that we manufacture. The new emission reduction targets, aligned with the SBT programme, will greatly extend the impact of our operations, as they will also affect our partners. Now, our goal is to impact the emissions of over 100 different companies.
“The production of the raw materials for tyres currently generates four times as much CO2 emissions per tyre than the manufacturing of the tyres themselves. We aim to reduce emissions from tyre raw material production by 25% between 2018 and 2030. Achieving this goal requires that our raw material producers implement their own actions in order to reduce emissions. These changes typically include transitioning to zero or low-emission energy and improving the energy efficiency of the entire production process. We can also favour raw materials that produce lower emissions when choosing materials and suppliers.
“Transporting raw materials and finished tyres creates substantial CO2 emissions. The entire logistics industry, in land, sea, and air transport alike, is actively seeking means to reduce emissions. Increasing the share of biofuels, improving the efficiency of engines, and optimising routes further are key methods in this. In logistics, we also aim to reduce CO2 emissions by 25% per tyre between 2018 and 2030. This is a challenging target and achieving it requires a steady improvement of 2.4% per year.
“Cars generate CO2 emissions as a combustion product of their fuel. In a typical passenger car, one sixth of this results from the energy consumed by the rolling resistance of tyres. If a vehicle’s CO2 emissions are, say, 150 g/km, the tyres amount to 25 g/km.
“We aim to reduce CO2 emissions from tyre use by 25% between 2018 and 2030. This improvement will have the largest impact on reducing Nokian Tyres’ global CO2 emissions, as our tyres are used on millions of vehicles.
“As our fourth target pursuant to the SBT program, we aim to cut CO2 emissions from the energy that we purchase and produce by 52% per single tyre between 2015 and 2030. We have already achieved a part of this target with the changes made in recent years. A reduction of 52% means that most of the energy that we purchase is low-emission or zero-emission and produced with renewable forms of energy, for example. At our Nokia factory, nearly all of the energy comes from renewable sources. At our US factory, a large 3 MW solar power plant located on the same property was commissioned at the end of April.
“Our targets are ambitious, and all the means to achieve them are not currently known. However, when there is a will, there is usually a way. Luckily, Nokian Tyres’ personnel are innovative and, as studies indicate, also eco-friendly (Personnel Survey 2018). Reducing emissions requires determined work across multiple years, and dozens of decisions in the right direction each year.
“We have been a tyre industry pioneer in many environmental matters. Nokian Tyres was the first tyre manufacturer to discontinue the use of harmful HA (high-aromatic) oils as raw materials, and the first to introduce a winter tyre in the best rolling resistance class A. We believe that our good example will advance the entire tyre industry, including in the field of greenhouse gas reductions.”
