Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the ROCKWOOL ESG Investor Call. Today, I'm pleased to present CEO Jens Birgersson, SVP Group Marketing, Communications, and Public Affairs Mirella Vitale, and Director Sustainability Anthony Abbotts. For the first part of this call, all participants will be in listen mode only, and afterwards, there will be a question-and-answer session. Just as a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I'll now turn over the presentation to your host. Please begin.
Welcome to ROCKWOOL Group's Conference Calls dedicated to ESG topics. My name is Thomas Harder. I'm Director of Group Treasury and Investor Relations of ROCKWOOL International. I'm here together with CEO Jens Birgersson, SVP Group Marketing, Communications, and Public Affairs Mirella Vitale, and Group Sustainability Director Anthony Abbotts. First, we will go through our presentation of today's ESG topic, the ROCKWOOL Sustainability Report for 2020. Afterwards, we'll be ready to answer all your good questions. Now, we can go to slide number two. We introduced the ROCKWOOL ESG Investor Calls in 2019, and today, we hold the first of four ESG Investor Calls planned in 2021. Please reserve the next date. Please go to slide number three. Let's start with the first point on the agenda. Jens Birgersson, I will now hand over the words to you.
Hello, everyone. I would just like to repeat, I have explained about those overriding principles we tried to slot all our efforts into those three principles there. So starting off, and that goes both for our footprint, what we, our own operations, the impact we have, and also the handprint and how we see that and the effects of our products on the planet and society and the climate, etc. And it is explained in the report, but I'll just recap it because it's important to me that at least you understand how we see it. And the first principle, with a finite planet and ever-growing population, the first principle and the highest priorities for us, and it also fits with our product, is to use less. On the outside, if you look at the handprint, we are talking about energy efficiency, always do energy efficiency first.
By doing that, reducing resource use and energy use, whatever you're going to do to supply the rest, you need to use less of it from a finite planet. The second principle then is green the rest. The most apparent example and action in that area is renewable energy. If you have saved a lot of energy, you need fewer renewable resources to get energy from, or you achieve 100% renewable energy footprint quicker by saving a lot of energy and resources above. The third item, and that kind of spinning in the background and often links into some of the others, that's to address climate hazards in the business. That goes for some of our products that act on the outside to address hazards, for example, Rockflow, our solution to mitigate the effects of flooding, that is the climate hazard.
But it can also be asset risk. It can be reputational risk and what have you. And for many of you that are investors, I think this whole thinking about the asset risk and a step change in the asset value that you can have in the future can go for a building. It can be a certain stock that is suddenly go from gray to pitch black because society moved forward. But the whole idea of thinking ahead and addressing hazards also in the light of asset risk. So that's how we think about it. And if you then look at the progress, and my colleagues will go through the progress in more detail, if we go back to the first principle of using less, we have hit our goal for 2022, our intermediate goal on water reductions.
Water is a bit of a tricky topic to go after because it's so incredibly cheap to reproduce. So you have to do this, although the savings in terms of money when you save water is very, very small. But it's a lot about stopping leaks, being more efficient, make sure it doesn't evaporate, and collect rainwater. Then we have also done a big step forward on landfill waste, where we cut 50%. We are ahead of our curve, so to say. And on the outside of the group, when we look into this reducing less, we have now launched Rockcycle in another three countries. And I think we are quite unique on that. We're actually starting to put a brand label on our product and say, "We are taking it back." And we see a tremendous interest in that.
But they have also done a whole lot of actions on CO2 intensity, which with that, I mean the amount of CO2 we emit per ton produced. And we get to that number by simply reducing waste and increasing furnace loss yield in our operation. So that's the first block. And you will see more things coming into that, but those were some of the results we have had internally and externally. Then we're greening the rest. We have done quite a bit. I'm satisfied with the progress. We started up the biggest electrical melter for stone wool in the world in Norway in December. And there we shifted from a cold fossil fuel melter to a green electricity electrical melter. So we're very happy with that. And that has given a tremendous reduction in CO2 emissions.
It has also enabled that we can increase the Rockcycle material, the material we take back into the melter to upcycle into new products. So that's really good to green the rest of the project. Then in Denmark, we went for biogas because it happens to exist there. We are the only company in the world that can melt stone with gas. We have now shifted over to biogas. That obviously has reduced our footprint tremendously and then enabled us to use a renewable energy source to create stone wool, the max stone wool. If you then look at addressing climate hazards, the actions I listed on the one and two, they of course directly focus on those two steps. That's homework we do.
Over time, the whole aspect of being able to offer circularity for a building material, where we are pioneers to move forward, and also to do a fuel transition. We have a big footprint, and we use fossil fuels of several types. To shift that footprint and do that fuel transition over, that is in some aspects also addressing a climate hazard. Over time, we know that to meet our long-term goals, we need to get started. We need to develop the technologies we are able to do it. I feel comfortable on the technologies we have developed in that we now have big-sized proof points that most of the things we need to do going forward, we are well into it, and we can do it practically. Obviously, we'll do a lot more development and add some new technologies.
There are still challenges, but it's tremendous success on that so far. Then on safety, I just want to say that you saw that the lost-time incident ratio, it went up a little bit. If you look at the whole business, we have kept the number of incidents where people get hurt in one or the other way, and they have to stay home from work a day or more. Actually, we are on the same level. We have one less incident in 2020. The ratio goes up because we had fewer work hours due to lower demand. I'm quite happy with that because I see it as a sign that we managed to go through COVID-19. For its sake, we've forgotten it now. For a period, that could have become stressful organization where people get stressed and make mistakes, and they get hurt.
We are running really industrial operations with heavy equipment and high temperatures. I'm satisfied that we managed to get through the years without a higher number of stress-related incidents in our factories and the office. With that, I would like to hand over to Anthony.
Thanks, Jens. And hello, everyone. So if we turn to Slide 5, Jens has already mentioned some of the sustainability highlights from the year. So I'm not going to dwell on this slide. Suffice it to say that we consider 2020 to be a significant year within sustainability. And we say that because of the goals that we have achieved two years early. Jens talked a little bit about that. I'll come into that a bit later. Also, the science-based target commitment that we made in December. And finally, the external recognition that we received on the positive impact of our products. We received a number of awards in the course of the year: a safety award in Poland, the Rockcycle Award in France, to mention a few. And as Jens talked about, our fuel-flexible technology in Denmark.
Moving from coal first to natural gas and now at the start of the year to biogas, we received the European Business Award for Environment there, which we're, of course, very proud of. We move to Slide 6. I think one of the highlights of the year was the fact that Trucost, which is part of Standard & Poor Global, for the second time classified 100% of our products as being SDG positive, which means that all of our products contribute to supporting reaching the SDG goals in 2030. Our score was top 10 out of 15,000 global companies that have participated in this assessment. And top 10 basically means that our company has one of the largest positive impacts when it comes to the geographies that we're located and the particular needs of those geographies. So that match means that we have this significant impact.
When you look at our ratings, then you can say that we're scored relatively highly within our industry. Our philosophy remains the same. I think I've mentioned it at a previous ESG call. We'll prioritize those areas that we consider to be material. And that, of course, can mean that we score less well in certain areas because the rating agencies look across the whole ESG spectrum. But what we do do is we prioritize having an open dialogue with these rating agencies, and we try to address our own disclosure gaps when possible, but also address any misunderstandings that can be at the rating agency side. To mention a couple of those scores there, Sustainalytics, we're top 11 out of 126 companies within our sector. Within CDP, we're in full conformance with TCFD. However, we're not disclosing some responses simply because of competitive reasons.
And we expect to improve our score going forward because of our commitment to science-based targets and because of the fact that we now have externally assured sustainability goals. We move to Slide 7. So now we'll look a little bit deeper into our sustainability progress for the year, building on what Jens started in the introduction. Slide 8. I think what's important is to say that whenever we communicate anything on sustainability, that it's incredibly important that it's fact-based. And that means that if you look at our report and read our report, you'll see that there's a significant amount of external references that we use. And we use third parties extensively to develop methodologies to calculate our product impacts. And those methodologies we make publicly available.
As I mentioned, I think an important milestone for the year was the fact that we achieved external assurance for six of our sustainability goals. That means the performance compared to 2015, but also external assurance for the baseline 2015. We did identify data gaps. We did identify processes that needed to be improved. But the result of that process was that there was no material impact on our performance disclosure. We move to Slide 9. So there are six sustainability goals that we have talked about in the last year or so. And now we have added two more. So that's the science-based targets relating to Scope 1 and 2 and to Scope 3, so life cycle emission. And as Jens has talked about, it's been a good year from a goal perspective. I'll dig a little bit deeper into CO2 and circularity.
But as Jens mentioned, we have achieved the water intensity goal. It hasn't been easy. Water is cheap. But we got there, which is two years ahead of schedule. And more than 70% of our factories have achieved significant improvements in water intensity. And some of those include the factories that are in water scarce areas, so the factories in Malaysia, India, Russia, where we've had significant improvement. Another goal that I'd mention here would be the energy efficiency in owned office. There were delays in finalizing renovations that were otherwise planned to be finalized in 2020. And that's why you can see that there has been no progress on that goal, at least from the achieving the 35% perspective. But there's been a lot going on. And we actually finalized two renovations here in the early part of 2021, which means that we are now up around 12% improvement.
We have another six renovations that are currently in progress, so we anticipate a much bigger improvement by the end of 2021. Slide 10, which looks at safety, and Jens, I think, has talked a little bit about that, so I won't dwell on that now. Of course, we can take any questions relating to safety afterwards. We move to Slide 11, CO2 intensity, greenhouse gas goals. We now have three sustainability goals relating to CO2 intensity and CO2 equivalent, so absolute emissions. The first one, which is our CO2 intensity goal, baseline 2015, achieved a 9% improvement, so 9% less CO2 per ton stone wool compared to 2015. I think that there have been three main contributors to that. Jens talked a little bit about our work within energy efficiency, which is, of course, the key pillar for us. The second one relates to technology innovation.
So again, for example, the effort that we have had in Denmark by moving from coal to natural gas. And this improvement does, of course, not take into account shifting to biogas, which will give additional improvements, which first took place in 2021. And the third key reason for achieving these improvements relates to purchase of guarantees of origin. One of them relates to our electrical melter in Norway. The second one in relation to sustainability certification in Poland. I think it's important to emphasize in relation to our science-based targets that we have set goals, both for Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3. We talked about in the previous ESG call the difference between the three scopes. There was not a requirement from SBTi for us to make a commitment to scope three. But we made that commitment.
It was important for us because, from our perspective, in order to measure the carbon intensity of a business, then you need to look at it from a life cycle perspective. You can't just look at it within the fence, within the manufacturing area. You need to look at it life cycle, and that, of course, includes end of life. So that's our philosophy. That's our approach, and, of course, going forward, we'll be driving an agenda to reduce emissions across the lifecycle. We move to Slide 12, circularity. Jens again mentioned the fact that we have added three additional Rockcycle schemes in the course of 2020. That's in Italy, in the U.K., and in Austria. We've increased the amount of volumes of recycled material by 7% compared to last year. And in addition to that, we have met the landfill goal of 40% by 2022.
So we hit 50%. And that means that we now have a large number of factories that have a closed-loop stone wool waste system. So, in other words, no stone wool waste leaving the factories. I think that was the main points from a sustainability progress and goal perspective. So now I'll pass over to Mirella to talk about EU policy development.
Good afternoon, everybody. I think since we had our last call, we had spent some time on that call discussing the EU Taxonomy and the sort of confusion surrounding that Delegated Act. So we wanted to sort of recap and give you an update. As you may recall, the draft Delegated Act on Taxonomy had reclassified the manufacturing of insulation materials away from the category which was manufacture of energy efficiency equipment for buildings and transitioned it to the manufacture of other low-carbon technologies. And, of course, that created some confusion. So, together with the Mineral Wool Association and other associations, Rockwool did respond to the consultation process. Some of the letters that I have countersigned have been published. But what happened during that process, since we last spoke, was that the draft Delegated Act issued by the EU Commission actually received 46,000 comments.
From those 46,000 comments, the Commission has informed us that 1,800 of these were deemed as essential and needed to be revised and input into the new Delegated Act. Since then, we haven't received a new version. We do expect to receive something pretty soon because the schedule for an approved or a discussed Delegated Act is still targeted for end of April. The EU Taxonomy scheme should come into play still at January 2022. So there's no change to the actual timeline. But, of course, with such a vast number of comments received and actions to be taken and discussions at member state level, the discussions are taking longer than we would have expected. But we imagine that we'll see something during the month of April, and we will, of course, update you and inform you.
I think that if we go to Slide 15, again, this is a recap of where we left off. The Recovery and Resilience Facility, and here we're very much talking just about this segment, requires that 30% of the funds are dedicated to green transition, and if we take just the grants of that allocation, which equal EUR 312 billion, we can see more and more countries dedicating and ring-fencing a very specific amount to the renovation. We would like to see about a 30% ratio. I know that that's quite ambitious, but when we look at climate targets, we see this as absolutely essential, so while we're very happy to see that the money is being ring-fenced to renovation, we would actually like to see more commitments with regards to the climate targets.
As you know, the Renovation Wave calls for a doubling of the renovation rate, which is about 2%. But after a first analysis, which was performed by the Building Performance Institute in Europe, they did an analysis of seven member states' commitments to the long-term renovation scheme, and they actually see that most of them are actually quite far away from achieving both the doubling of the renovation rate and actually the targets that would be required to be achieved on the 1.5 trajectory, so far, Finland, France, the Netherlands, and Spain have included an objective of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 90% by reducing the consumption of the buildings. Actually, very few of the plans as of today go into a great amount of detail by how much deep renovation is required to the building envelope.
So, again, it's good to see the funds dedicated to that segment, but we need to see those funds then enabling cities and people and buildings to achieve the relevant climate goals. Then, if we go to Slide 16, again, this is a talk we've been talking about recovery, and we have been primarily focused on the European Union. But, of course, recovery is very much a global topic and on the agenda of governments worldwide. So we also wanted to share some global figures that we've been looking at.
Here, you'll see the title of this slide, "The Biggest Job Potential is in Buildings." This is actually taken directly from the C40 technical report for a just and green transition, where they have taken proxy data from a typical megacity of each continent and showcased what would be the fastest and easiest way to recover economically and environmentally and socially from the crisis caused by the pandemic. From the data that they use in C40, which is also taken from the International Energy Agency's sustainable recovery outlook, you will see a standard green recovery scenario where the investments for the green transition take place over the next five years, where they believe this green transition will create 52.3 million jobs. Again, this is a standard scenario. If we go to the accelerated scenario, they actually are stating that the jobs created could reach up to 80 million.
If we go back and look at the Recovery and Resilience Facility, that actually has to be spent in three years, which would be the equivalent of the accelerated scenario that C40 are talking about globally. Out of these jobs, 74% would be created in the building and energy sector, and here they are grouped together in the report that you will find, but if you dig into the data, it actually states that 10-21 job years are created by $1 million invested in renovation of buildings, and you will see from the report itself, the multipliers that they use for construction is 4.8 jobs for building retrofits, 15.2 jobs for construction, compared to other energy projects where the ratio of the spend is much heavier on the capital investment, whereas, of course, construction is much more labor-intensive, and the multipliers of jobs is much less.
And hence, the statement and the claim that the best investment is actually investing in construction in order not only to distribute geographically the funds, but also to create more jobs. Then we move to Slide 17. When we talk about renovation, we cannot avoid talking about fire-safe renovation. When we look at the current building facade in Europe, much of the building, actually the energy-efficient buildings, have concrete and cement facades, which are, of course, fire-safe but very inefficient with regards to energy savings.
When you go and take action and renovate the building and add a facade, especially when we're talking high-rise hospitals and schools, it is, of course, essential that you look at the fire safety of the building and you ensure that you are not changing the destination of that building so that actually it goes from being energy-inefficient and fire-safe and then energy-efficient but, of course, not avoiding the spread of fire. We advocate for fire safety regulations also to be included in the energy performance of the building. We keep it very simple, where we say, "Don't take the risk and use only non-combustible insulation and non-combustible materials for your facades." At this moment in time, there's also a lot of discussion about using PV panels on the roof, which makes absolute sense to be using suitable spaces for the installation of PV panels.
But, again, without forgetting that additional dimension of fire safety, because having active components on your roof does cause some concerns if the building is not insulated or protected in the correct way. So I think this is it from my side, and I pass it over to Anthony.
Thanks, Mirella. So Slide 18, going forward, what can you expect? And we move to Slide 19 just to round up. I think what you should expect is that we will continue our momentum in 2021 in driving positive sustainability performance. And that, of course, is both from a product impact perspective, so the handprint, but also from an operational footprint perspective. We expect to continue to work to achieving our interim 22 goals in 2021, 2022, and expect good progress there. Decarbonization, we will continue with additional conversions that are in the pipeline. We have already communicated those plans from a fuel flexibility perspective, and we will continue with those. And then, from a circularity perspective, we will continue strengthening our circular business model, and that will include an increased number of country-specific reclaimed waste schemes. So, on that note, back over to the operator.
Thank you. If you wish to ask an audio question for this call, you may do so by pressing zero one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw from your question, you may do so by pressing zero two to cancel. Once again, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to ask an audio question, there'll be a brief pause whilst we wait for questions to be registered. Our first question comes from Laurits Kjaergaard from ABG . Please go ahead.
Thank you, Jens, Mirella, Anthony, and Thomas. Maybe a first question from my side on the topic that you were discussing, Mirella. Very clear in regards to the reclassification of the insulation segments on taxonomy. Could you talk about the definition of your in terms of the systems products that you also provide in the market in terms of taxonomy, which you have also given some input before to, but I would like an update after the inputs that you're giving. And also, in terms of the inputs that you gave to the delegated acts from the perspective of your products, could you perhaps enlighten us a little bit to what you were sort of missing from the delegated acts? Thank you.
Yeah. So, with regards to our systems divisions, not all our products are actually classified as of now. This is something that is being worked on on the new draft. But if you take, for example, our cladding materials, so cladding today actually does sit in the original classification and has remained in the manufacturing of energy-efficient equipment. And hence, that's why we also push for insulation to be put in that segment, because, obviously, the cladding by itself, without having an insulated building, does not achieve the required results that would otherwise be necessary if you're going to achieve a deep renovation. So, cladding is very much still in the original classification. Again, so are roofing systems. So, it creates also some confusion with where our products actually sit, because, of course, we have cladding, we have roofing systems, and they are considered energy-efficient equipment.
But with regards to our other materials, we're still waiting to see the final classification of that, and we don't have clarity in that space right now.
That's super. On Page 16 of your ESG report, you write, "Energy efficiency is a catalyst for thermal renewable heating systems such as heat pumps, reducing required upfront costs." And you also mentioned the PV panels on this call. In terms of these other types of materials, other types of equipment to use to complement insulation, could you talk about how you implement or how you view other similar materials when you are measuring your Scope 3, please?
When we're measuring Scope 3, could you just clarify that question again? Sorry, Laurits.
So, just to get an idea of the total output of your products, because this is what you talk about on Page 16 of your report. So, just to get an idea of how you interlink insulation with other similar energy-efficient products.
Yeah. I mean, from a Scope 3 perspective, we don't interlink it, right? I mean, when we do our lifecycle analyses to calculate Scope 3 emissions, then it's related to the product. So, the product before it goes in the building. When it goes in the building, then, of course, you need another lifecycle assessment to calculate the emissions from that particular building. But when we calculate Scope 3 emissions, it's product-specific, and it's not related to the system as a whole.
Yeah. And then, if you're referring to how then we complement with the other materials, obviously, it very much depends on the scheme and the target that is put by the individual countries. So, as we have mentioned a couple of times, the renovation scheme in Italy requires you to have a two-class improvement. So, if you're a Class E, you would have to improve two energy classes. And then, based on the current building design, an energy advisor goes in and decides what is necessary. And we find that very often, especially when we're looking at the Italian market, PV or an improved heat pump is not sufficient in order to improve those two categories. And therefore, a deeper renovation also of the building facade comes into play.
In other countries, they're not looking at classes, but, for example, France is looking at a 41% reduction in the energy consumption of the buildings. So, it's really something that we look and analyze. I wouldn't even say market to market. It's almost building to building. And hence, there's a lot of energy advisors today involved in making these calculations. And, of course, we collaborate with in order to ensure that our customers are able to access these schemes. Does that answer your question?
Yeah, and you also collaborate with, for example, the heat pump manufacturers?
We don't collaborate directly, but these energy advisors that are now in France. They've kind of, the government has set up a one-stop shop to advise entities. Italy is doing it actually through a consultancy, and it's the consultancy themselves that then sort of work as project managers, you can almost say, and put the building owner or the contractor in contact with the heating or PV or installation people. So we don't have a direct collaboration, but obviously, through the energy advisor, there is a natural collaboration. Of course, in Denmark, we do have a direct collaboration because BetterHome works in that way on our behalf. But that setup is not very typical outside of Denmark.
That's super. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Josefin Johansson from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi there. Thank you for an interesting call. My question, I have two, but relating to carbon emissions, and my first one is, on Slide 11, we could see that you have had an impressive reduction in emissions, both in terms of Scope 1 and 2, but also in Scope 3, and my first question is, could any of these numbers be distorted by the pandemic, for example, lowering production, and my second one is, do you expect to do these kind of big leaps going forward as well, or do you expect it to become a bit more challenging now, reducing the final share of these emissions? Thank you.
Good question. As we've shown on Slide 11, the improvements that we have made in the course of 2020, so energy efficiency, technology innovation, guarantees of origin, they have all had a positive impact on our CO2 intensity goal, and they have also had a positive impact on our science-based targets, and that's both Scope 1, 2, and 3. But you're completely right. Because of the COVID pandemic, then, of course, our production volumes have been much lower. And as a result of our production volumes being lower, then we have emitted less. And, of course, that has had an impact as we go forward. Then, of course, we expect those to increase, and that will have a negative impact on CO2 emissions. However, again, that will be, you could say, matched by the continuous focus we have on reducing our CO2 intensity.
Do you believe that the final, for example, when it comes to life cycle greenhouse gas emissions, do you believe that the final 9% of 2030 will be a bit more challenging? I mean, if you've been sort of picking the low-hanging fruit, and now it's the more greater challenges going forward.
Yeah. I mean, absolutely. And you could say that there is clearly a risk that we go backwards, that the 11% improvement that we have achieved in Scope 3 emission reductions, that it's less than 11% next year. That's clearly that risk. It's very much dependent on the growth of our business, because what you have to remember is our science-based targets are reducing a third of emissions, but on top of those third of emissions, any emissions that are related to organic growth, those emissions need to be reduced as well.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Mikael Petersen from SEB. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hi. Thank you for taking my question. It's a question for Mirella. In relation to the figures pasted on Slide 15, the numbers that are estimated, is that estimated by ROCKWOOL, or what is the source of this?
Yeah. So, we take it. It's definitely a calculation made by ROCKWOOL, but it's taken from what is publicly available from the different entities and the different governments. Why we say estimated is because many of them categorize the renovation funds in different places. So, of course, you have the long-term renovation scheme, which many of them are primarily focused on residential and not on public buildings. So, we actually expect these numbers to be sort of a minimum, because we, of course, expect there to be renovation of hospitals, renovation of schools, and these sometimes are falling under the healthcare budget or under the education budget. So, the activity of renovation is placed. It's a little bit spread out in the different plans that they are submitting to the European Union, and hence, it's estimated.
Okay. Thank you. And then, you mentioned the renovation funds. Do you have any estimate of how the split is in these funds, like in terms of activities?
You mean between residential and?
No, I'm talking about renovation activities, if it's windows, insulation material, etc.
No. Of course, that we don't have. And hence, what I was trying to say is that, obviously, it's good to see that funds are going into renovation, but then there's a whole sort of awareness that the funds should go into deep renovation in the building envelope and not only on active components. What we can see is promising, that we do see targets that are requiring that the buildings are heading towards nearly zero energy requirements. But there's a big range. As I said, France is targeting a 41% reduction in energy use, whereas we have a country like Spain that is targeting 70% for residential, 33% for commercial buildings.
So, again, we are still working with local entities to ensure that there's a broader awareness of not only putting funds into renovating to renovation per se, but actually ensuring that we reach the climate targets and stay on that 1.5 trajectory.
Okay. Thank you. And I have a final question for Anthony. When answering the impact from the COVID-19, you said that the production volumes was much lower. Can you try to quantify that?
Yeah. I think much lower. I think that's an exaggeration. They were lower. And as a result of that, that has had a positive impact on our CO2 emissions.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Frans Hoyer from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Good afternoon. Thank you very much. A question on the taxonomy and the 46,000 comments you mentioned. I'm not quite clear on whether the 1,800 that the commission deemed critical. Are you aware if the concerns raised by yourselves and your partners regarding stone wool are in there among the 1,800, please?
No. Unfortunately, we don't have that visibility. So, we have, as I said, we submitted a consultation, both as ROCKWOOL and as the European manufacturers, but we won't be able to know any further information until a new draft is shared.
Understood.
It's not an open process after the consultation.
Understood, and second question on the recycling. The way I understand it is that you have achieved a 50% reduction of the waste going to landfill from your own production. And I'm just unclear whether the recycle, the Rockcycle, is also about recycling waste from the demolition part of when your customers demolish your buildings. Are you able to take some of that stone material and use that in your production, or is that misunderstanding?
Yeah. So, to clarify, we have these two goals. We have the landfill waste goal, which is 40% by 2022, and we've achieved a 50% reduction. So, that is, as you quite rightly say, the production waste leaving our factories. Yes? And as I think I said in the presentation, we have now the majority, actually, of our factories that have a fully closed-loop system when it comes to stone wool. So, because the stone wool is inherently recyclable, we're able to simply recycle that wool in the factories without it leaving the factories. So, that's the one side. And then the other side, which relates to our Rockcycle offering, that is waste that is coming back from market. And that can be waste coming from construction sites in connection with the installation of the wool in the buildings.
It can come from renovation, and it also can come from demolition sites.
Understood. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Brijesh Siya from HSBC. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Thank you. I have two questions. The first one is to Anthony. On the landfill, right, so when you are saying we have achieved 50% and it's all production waste, what is kind of stopping us to not go to 100%? Because it's, as you say, majority is closed-loop. And should we be expecting in the near future we'll have 100% reduction in the landfill waste?
Yeah. So, we have a goal of 85% reduction in total landfill waste from all of our factories globally by 2030. And basically, that 85% is achieving those closed-loop systems. So, it requires technology. It requires infrastructure. And, of course, we have that objective to achieve that 2030 goal. The fact that we've already achieved a 50% reduction two years earlier can mean that we can achieve that goal much earlier than 2030.
But the fact that the starting point is that we're able to actually recycle this wool, and that means that this is possible, which is not possible for many other building materials.
Okay. Now, going back to the CO2 reduction, especially the Scope 3, 1, so you have achieved 11% reduction. If I take out the 4% reduction in your volume for 2020, still a meaningful reduction of 7% we can see there. Can you just talk about what role kind of where all you have seen those kind of reductions?
What role?
Yeah.
Just clarifying question? I'm just trying to understand.
Yeah. So, I'm just trying to understand the Scope 3 reduction of 11%. That looks quite substantial, the number, even if you take out the 4% reduction in the volume. So, even if I take that, it's still a high single-digit reduction. Can you just let us know what role kind of drove that number?
Yeah. I mean, what you can see is that for our Scope 1 and 2 emissions, then we achieved a 10% reduction. So, you can see that there is a correlation between Scope 1 and 2 reductions and Scope 3 reductions, which makes a lot of sense, because, of course, if you're reducing energy, if you're reducing the amount of resources that you're using in the factory, as Jens started by saying, using less and then greening the rest, then that's also going to have a positive impact on Scope 3. So, there's no doubt that the improvements that we have achieved in Scope 1 and 2 have also had a direct impact on the reductions in Scope 3. And then, of course, being able to recycle and not have end-of-life emissions, that also has a positive impact on our Scope 3 emissions.
Okay. Better. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Cedar Ekblom from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Thanks very much. I've got quite a few questions. The first one is, can you give us a number on your absolute emissions, CO2 emissions per ton of stone wool produced? I know you've given us a number on the reduction, but an absolute number would be useful. Secondly, on the point on recyclability, I think it's really interesting that you're saying you can get to 85% reduction in landfill waste from your own production side. Being that the circularity point is one that you stressed as an important differentiator for your product, can you explain to us you said you needed to make some investments for this to happen. How difficult is it really to actually lift that recycling ratio? I would expect that the product you're taking from your own production processes is probably the easiest to recycle, in inverted commas.
So, how hard is it going to be to actually increase recyclability from demolition waste? And then the last question is for Mirella. I just wanted to understand. It seems like you're optimistic on the outlook for renovation funding, but would it be fair to say that actually the schemes are quite complex at the moment to put into place? You talk about different levels of energy performance that need to be achieved and different approvals that need to be secured and understanding how different types of actions work together. So, upgrading your building envelope and then going for a heat pump or a new condensing boiler. I mean, is it that the reality on the ground is that the money is potentially available, but actually getting the money to individuals is quite difficult?
And on that point, what are you seeing at a European level in order to speed up access to these programs? And I say that with reference to the U.K. program, which obviously had a lot of sort of fanfare and optimism around it, but actually has subsequently been cancelled. Basically, putting it simply, money is one thing, but how do we actually start to see the money finding its way to individuals? Have you done some work on payback analysis, which could support that actually we are going to see a step change in renovation on the ground rather than just these very high-level policy statements? Anthony first.
That was certainly many questions. Start by answering your first question there on the how many emissions, how much emissions do we have? I think we mentioned in the last call when we announced our science-based targets that the split was roughly 2 million tons for Scope 1 and 2 and 1 million ton for Scope 3. If you look at our sustainability report, Page 29, then you'll see that in 2020, our total direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions, so Scope 1 and 2, that was 1.85 million tons CO2 equivalent. And then Scope 3 was 870,000 CO2 equivalent. They're the numbers relating to Scope 1, 2, and 3. And then your question relating to recycling of our own production waste, your question was, how easy is it to accelerate this? We have a good momentum. We have achieved now a 50% reduction.
We have a goal of 85% by 2030. How difficult is it to accelerate that process? I mean, we have different options when it comes to recycling in our production facilities. We have briquetting plants where we're able to mix our old stone wool or stone wool generated and waste generated in the factory with other raw materials and then put that in the melter. We also have the possibility of throwing waste directly in the melter, and that can be both in our fuel-flexible technology or in our electrical melter, and depending on the technologies that we have, then there will be different opportunities. I think Jens, he mentioned at the start our electrical melter technology in Norway, which is able to reduce the amount of waste generated at that factory by 99%.
So, we have different options, and there's a close linkage between the opportunities we have in terms of how much we can recycle and the decarbonization roadmap that we have. And then I think the third question to Mirella.
Okay. For sure, the renovation of buildings becomes more complex because you have more stakeholders. So, compared to a large energy infrastructure project, there's more complexity in terms of the more people that you have to speak to, but also the time that it takes to actually get a project approved is actually much faster. And therefore, the money actually hits the economy in a much easier way in that sense. But if we take, I mean, very much the schemes are very different country to country. But if you take the Italian scheme, then I think we discussed at a previous call.
Of course, that one, it kickstarted even before the European renovation funds were being discussed for this specific topic because the Italian government saw a need to kickstart the economy in the fastest way possible and in the most fair way possible in order to ensure that they reached a very broad audience, and so they have the 110% tax benefit where the end user actually doesn't have to put any money upfront because it can be the contractor, the bank, or a third party that then takes over the tax credit, and we see that the renovation scheme in Italy is working very well. There's a lot of activity. There is some complexity in getting the permit.
Hence, this sort of new profile of energy advisor is coming up in the market, and we see that they are actually the ones that are certified to ensure before because if you don't obtain the benefit, if you don't achieve the two-class improvement, then you can't receive the funds. So, of course, you need a third-party energy advisor that is assisting the general public. What we have done at ROCKWOOL is actually we've also set up a facility in our own team where we are guiding people through the process. So, you can actually sign up on a ROCKWOOL page. You can join webinars. You can contact our technical support people, and they will handhold people through this process. So, we are actually getting involved ourselves in ensuring that the community and people can access the funds.
It is a service that we are offering on the Italian market. We do the same in Poland where we are facilitating connections between the end user and the distributor or the contractor based on our very large installer network. And they, again, go through on our website, share relevant information about the projects they're thinking of, and we help them through the process. If you take what is happening in France, the White Certificate Scheme has always been there. The funds that are going into the system are an add-on to the White Certificate Scheme. That is quite a complex scheme. But what the French government is doing is now setting up these through the utility, actually. They are setting up these sort of one-stop shops where, again, the end user can go in and get advice on how to best renovate their homes.
Yes, the U.K. scheme, I think, is though impacted by a series of different matters. For sure, there was some confusion when the scheme was launched. I think they definitely still have some problems with their building codes and regulations, also quality of installers, etc. But from a ROCKWOOL perspective, obviously, the U.K. is still an interesting market for us in terms of renovation because as we see that the regulations continue to change in favor of fire-safe insulation following the inquiries that we all know about, we obviously still believe that it's a positive market for renovation for us. So, all in all, we do see that it's more complex, but we really believe this time that renovation is going to be pushed a lot harder because we can't achieve the goals.
The 1.5% trajectory cannot be reached if the building stock is not renovated. And we also feel the need to distribute the jobs, the money, the economy more equally across the different geographies. And of course, with small medium enterprises working in construction, we feel that the governments are going to prioritize in that direction this time.
Thanks. Sorry, I don't know. Does that answer the question? It does. Can I just ask one? I don't know if you've done the analysis. With your teams that you are putting on the ground in Italy and Poland, I don't know if you've done any analysis on paybacks or any work looking at if the funds that have actually been allocated are sufficient. My understanding is that this is a huge opportunity, but it's also a huge cost that's going to come with this.
I just wonder if you've got any information on actual take-ups of these schemes, what we're actually seeing on the ground as it relates to energy renovation rates. Maybe it's too early to get those types of numbers, but is this actually hitting the ground now, or are we still in a situation where these schemes need to be refined, more information needs to be made available, and actually probably more funds need to be made available before we really see the impact on renovation rates on the ground?
Yeah. So, it is a little bit to evaluate, but of course, some markets are moving much faster than others. And the markets that I mentioned, Poland, Italy, Germany, France are moving faster than some of the other markets. But actually, Spain has come out with a very ambitious plan now also for renovation, dedicating funds to the scheme.
When we talk about payback, I think this is actually the really interesting part for us because we traditionally only talk about payback when we're talking about the energy-efficient component of the building, but I think in especially more than ever today, we need to look at the environmental payback, the societal payback, and the economic payback, and I think renovation hits all those three areas because there is definitely a positive impact for society at large. Again, it's a labor-intensive workplace when you're working on renovation. The jobs are local. Money is spent locally, and after the funds are distributed and the renovation takes place, the asset stays in the hand of the end user, so they're really receiving benefit themselves. The end user feels the benefit of a better house at the end of the day.
So, I think you have to consider all these multiple benefits when you're calculating the payback.
Really helpful. Thanks a lot.
And I feel that is what is being done.
Thank you. Our final question comes from Yintong Ouyang from On Field Investment Research. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hi. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question. I've got two. The first one is I am wondering if we can touch a little bit upon on the U.S. because apparently it seems like Biden wants to propose a climate bill which will focus on the decarbonization of buildings in the U.S. I was wondering it would be great if you can provide a little bit of color there, like what you're seeing in the U.S. market, what's the sentiment there? Because it seems like the program will focus a lot on HVAC instead of insulation. And also, if there's actually money flowing into building decarbonization, how do you think you will be able to compete with the fiberglass insulation producers who have been there for a very long time in terms of capturing the growth that is created by this kind of mechanism?
Yeah, well, I mean, there's no doubt that the U.S. is a very interesting market, and we do see that it is a market that is also moving towards the direction of decarbonizing buildings. It's very difficult to sort of have a generic answer for the U.S. because it's not really federally led, so at the end of the day, yes, the high-level positioning comes from the Biden administration, but then it really boils down to state and sometimes even city governor level, and there's very different approaches from California to another state, so it's difficult for me to give you a sort of simple answer. We would really have to look at it state- by- state or city- by- city.
But of course, we do see, once again, because it's driven very heavily by the need to reach the environmental targets and the need to kickstart the economy in a quick way, we do see that buildings are very high on the agenda. But I think the U.S. requires a bit of a detailed breakdown for me to give you an answer. And then the competition with fiberglass, it's always been there. It will continue to be there, and we will continue to position ourselves in the best way possible. Of course, we are confident in our product and therefore confident that we can compete on the market.
I see. And then, do you see any kind of preliminary draft or whatever from different states regarding building decarbonization at the moment?
I think New York already had Local Law 97, which actually came out. I'm not sure now: is it 2019? Was it 2020? I mean, some cities already have decarbonization programs or energy efficiency programs. For sure, New York was the first mover, and that was way before the pandemic. Again, the need to renovate buildings and to decarbonize buildings and to reduce energy use in buildings has been there. As we were saying before, it's been complex. Therefore, one thing that I can tell you is we see there has been a huge investment gap in the renovation of buildings compared to decarbonizing the electricity grid. Now we see a little bit of a shift coming over because of that need to accelerate both on climate action and on the economy and creating new jobs.
As everybody's talking about a green industrial policy or a green jobs economy, we see the renovation of buildings playing a much bigger role going forward. So, yes, some cities do already have plans. New York, it's already in place. California, very ambitious plans also. And we hope and expect more to follow.
Great. That's very helpful. Thank you. And then the second one is on the Slide 19. You said that in 2021, you have additional conversions in the pipeline. I know that ROCKWOOL does not usually give any quantified numbers on that. Just wondering, can you give a couple of examples on the projects that you have in the pipeline, for example, shifting to renewable energies in 2021 or 2022?
Yeah. So, I think we have communicated our plans so far. So, in relation to conversion in Poland, the Danish case we've given an example of, also in Norway. And I think we've also communicated the one in China as well. And they're the ones that we've publicly communicated so far. There's more that will come along, but they're the ones that are in the public space at the moment.
Great. Thank you very much.
And our next question is from Brijesh Siya from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Just a follow-up for Anthony, really. It's on the number of countries where you have, I think, the recycling facility that has gone up to 14, and the absolute number has increased 7%.
Sorry, could you speak up a little bit? We're having trouble hearing you.
Oh, sorry. So, it's just on the recycling facilities. You are currently providing on 14, which is an increase of three. But the number kind of has moved up 7%. I would assume that you're just probably educating people there around. So, should we expect a significant jump in 2021 when these kind of countries accelerate those recycling facilities, taking back the product from the site?
Yeah. So, of course, we are increasing the number of countries where we're offering Rockcycle. And of course, when we offer these comprehensive systems, then we will expect to get more volumes of waste coming back from market. But in terms of how much comes back from market, often it's very dependent on what conditions are present in that particular market. For example, we are challenged in some markets that landfill prices are low, and therefore there is quite a low incentive for our customers to use our scheme because it's much cheaper to send the waste to landfill. What's important for us is to signal to the market that we have this ability. We have the possibility of taking back this waste. We can recycle it.
And of course, the regulations coming out of the EU in relation to the Green Deal and the Circular Action Plan, they will also help to support more conducive conditions in the different markets. But there is a big variation in terms of whether it makes financial sense for the contractors and the customers to utilize our service or not. There's a big difference across the different countries. Does that answer your question?
Yeah. Thank you. And just thinking that financial, what do you call it, incentive, do you have any financial incentive to increase that number? I mean, does that give any, what do you call it, cost reduction in your plan if you recycle an existing stone rather than using?
I can take that. It varies tremendously what the equation is. And when you recycle stone, if you take it back from site, it's generally a fluffier material. And that means that logistic costs can be higher. And then it depends how much we charge for that. So, it's not a clear pattern for saving or improvement. But typically, plus minus a wash is what we normally can achieve in a market. And there are some markets where it's even cheaper to do with upcycle and others a bit more expensive. But we don't need to worry so much about it that we kind of say we steer in the wrong way. We simply try to get back as much as we can because it's a good business model to drive that.
Understood. Thanks, Jens.
I will now hand the word back to the speakers for any final comments.
Thank you for participating in today's EC Investor Call, and do feel free to provide us with your feedback or input to topics you would like us to address. By this, we wish you all a great weekend. Thank you.