8 February 2023

GoGreen – Our path to climate neutrality

Nordzucker has set itself ambitious targets for the coming years: Phasing out coal by 2030 and CO2 neutrality in production by 2050 at the latest. Already by 2030, direct CO2 emissions are to be halved compared to the average emissions of the years 2017-2019.

The GoGreen program takes three approaches to shaping a sustainable energy supply for Nordzucker. The measures are interlinked: by 2030, there will be a switch from coal and oil to alternative fuels with lower CO2 emissions, predominantly natural gas. At the same time, energy requirements will be reduced with new technologies, modernizations and optimized heat and energy management, so that even less CO2 will be emitted. A roadmap is currently being developed for each European plant.

As sugar production remains energy-intensive, the third component is the development of renewable energy sources. Here, for example, the use of beet pulp to generate biogas opens up the possibility of covering a large part of the energy required in the future. Technical and regulatory hurdles are to be overcome in current and future projects in order to exploit this potential.