LM_Sustainability_Report_2022

People and society Carbon neutrality Circularity LM Wind Power Sustainability Performance 2022 Introduction not go into the final product. Research indicates that blade manufacturing waste volumes are expected to be larger than decommissioned blade volumes in the coming decade. But what if we did not waste our waste? What if we took waste that is normally viewed as trash or rubbish and turned it into something valuable to help power a cleaner planet and future for us all? In 2021, we committed to manufacture zero waste blades by 2030, a significant step in our mission of powering a cleaner world, together with our industry partners. Zero waste blades means we will send no packaging and materials from blade manufacturing to landfill or incineration without energy recovery by 2030. In 2022, we embedded our Zero Waste Blades 2030 target as a strategic breakthrough within the company strategy. This program has enabled significant progress toward our 2030 goal. Through a combination of material waste prevention initiatives and partnerships to increase recycling rates at our plants, our material efficiency improved by 17% in 2022 (material efficiency = tons of waste excluding recycled / MW produced) compared to 2021. Preventing waste In the Zero Waste Blades program, we aimed at reducing direct consumption of materials like carbon, glass, resin and glue, which are used in the blade building process. These materials either become a part of the final product (blades) or are discarded as manufacturing waste and are sent to landfill, or an incineration station. To lower our consumption of carbon, we reviewed the spar cap building process. Spar caps make up the support beam, which runs the length of the blade and are built from carbon planks that come in various lengths. These carbon planks are transportation. Our long-term PET strategy is to source main (and where possible all) volumes with Recycled PET, and in 2022 most of the PET demand was secured with R-PET. Engagement with our supply chain on waste prevention and increasing recycled content into the materials we purchase will increase over the coming years; in partnerships we are exploring how we can ultimately deliver waste back to suppli- ers, for recycling into new materials that will be supplied to the wind industry or other sectors. Reusable packaging Following the Zero Waste Blades pledge, we analysed our packaging options for core kits across all facilities globally. This helped to identify a positive business case - to increase reusable packaging options that will also lead to cost reduc- tion and reducing the packaging waste. We are now engaging with our suppliers across locations to introduce more reusable options like returnable carts, carboard boxes or corrugated boxes. For example, in our plant in North America, returnable packaging material is a requirement for qualifying a local sup- plier of the kitting material used in blade manufacturing. Manufacturing We believe the true value of wind comes from what it produc- es, and from what it doesn’t produce. Every day our blades capture the wind to produce clean energy, and through inno- vation and partnerships, we aim to produce this clean energy with zero waste. We are taking steps to address issues of waste generation and management even before the product is “born” to limit impacts throughout the product life cycle and even afterwards. Zero Waste Blades by 2030 Producing manufacturing waste is inevitable. In our produc- tion, around 25% of materials currently go to waste and do Life Cycle Assessment? rave analysis technique o ssess environmental impacts ith all stages of a product or process’ life materials Inbound transport Manufacturing Outbound transport Inst llation Operations & maintenance End of life Inputs Raw materials Energy Water Outputs Emissions Waste By-products Environmental impacts Global Warming Potential (GWP) Depletion of natural resources Depletion of natural resources Ecotoxicity Human toxicity Eutrophication LCA of a typical glass blade + = Cradle -to -grave Cradle -to -gate Transport Inbound Transport Transport Frames Electricity Blade Mold Other Gelcoat Adhesives Plastics Packaging Steel Polyester Resin Glass Fibre Manufacturing Raw materials 32