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Because every kilowatt counts

When it comes to protecting the planet and creating a sustainable Bekaert, few things carry as much impact as reducing the carbon footprint in our own facilities. 

We launched a global program, You Know Watt, at the end of 2021 to reduce our energy consumption and use energy more efficiently in the plants. Because we care about every kilowatt we use. 

This initiative helps us to achieve the goal of reducing our carbon footprint by 46.2% by 2030. With all of our plants working together as one team, we will reduce our energy intensity by 10-15% which is a significant part of our overall Bekaert goal. Ultimately, we aim to reach carbon net zero by 2050.

With ‘You Know Watt’, we are taking another step to reduce our environmental footprint and to make Bekaert more sustainable. Our local teams are at the heart of this global program creating lasting positive change.

Ann-Francoise Versele

VP Sustainability
Ann-Francoise Versele

Our Focus 

As part of this program, we focus on the things that matter when it comes to energy usage:

  • build awareness about what each of us can do to save energy day-by-day
  • measure the current energy consumption in the plant
  • identify potential energy efficiency improvement opportunities and evaluate each one of them 
  • implement the technically and economically feasible opportunities, using standard solutions where possible  

Our approach

We believe in learning by doing and learning from each other. Together we are stronger. We have designed an implementation program to cover the top 20 biggest CO2 emitting plants within Bekaert. This is the framework that is both agile and locally empowered.

With each plant, we follow a structured process over a period of several months. We go from plant to plant to bring You Know Watt to local teams, evaluating findings and implementing energy efficiency improvements. 

It also made sense to us to use this program to identify ways to reduce water and to achieve our target of 15% reduction of relative freshwater by 2030. We are doing this by for example optimizing the water management of our cooling towers and the different water treatment systems for process water.  

Our progress until the end of November 2022

>4000

Colleagues involved in You Know Watt

234

Energy improvement projects identified

7500

Tons of waste reduction potential identified

8%

Of energy efficiency savings identified (relative to global 2019 energy baseline)

Energy efficiency opportunities

The Izmit plant in Turkey was the first facility to kick off You Know Watt in 2021. The results exceeded our expectations, as we identified 17.3% of potential improvements in energy intensity.

Since then, we achieved similar results in other plants in Europe and Asia. The facts are pointing us to great energy efficiency opportunities such as heat recuperation furnaces and ovens and upgrading motors on machines to those with higher efficiency ratings.

The story of You Know Watt is at the heart of establishing the new possible on our road to carbon net zero.

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