Carbon neutral since 2020

We take our responsibility to reduce emissions seriously. We have switched to renewable energy in all our production facilities. We have also invested in our own biopower plant in Vaasa, which produces the heat energy needed for the entire plant by burning oat husk waste.

- We are not able to reduce our emissions completely, so we have compensated for the remaining emissions," says Niklas Kumlin, CEO of Helsinki Mills.

In 2021, the combined emissions of Helsinki Mills were 120 tonnes of CO2e. This is equivalent to the annual carbon footprint of about 10 Finns.

- We will offset our scope 1-2 emissions in 2021 with Finnish forest-based carbon sinks, Kumlin says. “We have also identified our scope 3 emission sources and are exploring measures to reduce them”, he continues.

COAL SINKS NEARBY, RIGHT ON THE EDGE OF THE FIELD

As a partner for compensation we chose Green Carbon and its forest carbon sinks that promote additional forest growth. In practice, additional growth in forests is achieved by nitrogen fertilisation. The carbon sequestration that we bought was completed in 2022, and the units generated from it have been verified by DNV. Our coal sink projects are located in Pieksämäki, Viitasaari, Pertunmaa and Hollola.

In previous years, Helsinki Mills' carbon footprint has been offset by planting trees in Africa. "We wanted a domestic offset target, even though the challenge is the so-called double counting," says Niklas Kumlin.

- From the perspective of carbon offset risk management, it has been noticed that all projects have challenges and, for example, due to double counting, no project meets the quality criteria 100%, says Saija Ahonen from Green Carbon. "Domestic forest carbon sink is a very good option due to its transparency and third-party verification-based approach," Ahonen continues.