Skretting Sustainability Report 2021

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Climate and circularity

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global food system contributes between 21-37% of all GHG emissions. Many studies have been published that measure the footprint of animal protein production, and have made it clear that the volume of emissions from our value chain is significant.

Our ambition is to be the leading partner in driving the journey towards an even more sustainable aquaculture industry. 2021 was a year unlike any other due to complex supply chain issues. Despite these disruptions, increasing ingredient prices and transportation challenges, we never strayed from sourcing responsibly and maintained a clear focus on using sustainable ingredients.

Brazil farmer, soil in hands

Climate and Footprinting: Our approach

Natural resources are physically limited as well as the capacity of nature to cope with anthropogenic emissions. In this respect, the global community needs to find a way to not only limit but also actively reduce its environmental footprint in order to guarantee a future worth living for the generations to come. This is nowadays widely accepted and internationally agreed. With the Paris Agreement, for example, the world governments committed to limit global temperature rise to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C. In 2021, however, global temperature was already 1.2°C above this baseline, showing that there is not much room left. The message is clear: We need to act now!

RoadMap 2025 targets: Climate and footprinting & energy

Commit to Science-Based Targets.

Green light icon.pngOur Progress

We have committed to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) that we will reduce 30% of our scope 1 & 2 emissions and 58% of our scope 3 emissions.

Specific SDG sub-targets addressed

SDG sub-target 13.1/Business interpretation – Setting science-based GHG reduction targets in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

SDG sub-target 7.3:/Business interpretation – Reducing energy consumption in own
operations, including through using heating and cooling technology, efficient lighting, efficient electrical appliances and fuel-efficient vehicles.

Implement LCA footprinting in feed formulations, in the innovation stage-gate process, and in procurement (as part of Scope 3 for Science-Based Targets).

Green light icon.pngOur Progress

We have implemented LCA footprinting in our feed formulation software and create a dashboard to monitor our scope 3 emissions.

Specific SDG sub-targets addressed

SDG sub-target 13.1/Business interpretation – Working with suppliers to improve supplier sustainability management and prevent supply chain interruptions or delays due to climate change.

SDG sub-target 12.2/Business interpretation – Investing in environmental performance improvements and training programmes in core business strategies, operations, and throughout the supply chain.

Develop footprinting capacity in our farm and formulation models to help customers measure and reduce their emissions.

Yellow light icon.pngOur progress

Skretting Italy launched CarbonBalance and we are working to develop a global model that allows us to measure the footprint of the feed and farm.

Specific SDG sub-targets addressed

SDG sub-target 12.2/Business interpretation – Raising consumer awareness and promoting consumer education to improve their willingness to engage in sustainable consumption.

Exploring different mechanisms to be supplied with renewable energy or promote renewable sources by, for example, signing contractual agreements to buy energy generated by a renewable asset (Power Purchase Agreement – PPA).

Yellow light icon.pngOur progress

40% of Skretting’s scope 2 energy is renewable.

Specific SDG-targets addressed

SDG sub-target 7.2/Business interpretation – investing in and promoting initiatives on renewable energy and integrating these into business strategy.

Monitoring and reporting on the amount of energy produced, purchased and consumed, according to source.

Nutreco acknowledges UN Principle 15 approach in applying a precautionary principle when considering the physical impact of a changing climate; where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, including severe weather events, rising sea levels and shifting temperature zones, a lack of full scientific certainty will not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.

Emissions related to each scope throughout the process between production and transport of feed. Adapted from GHG Protocol.

Our emissions reduction commitment by 2030 (SBTi):

30% absolute reduction of our scope 1 & 2 emissions from a baseline year of 2018.

58% economic intensity reduction of our Scope 3 emissions. (According to SBTi methodology, Scope 3 targets are for 67% of a company’s suppliers. Nutreco’s published target is a 58% reduction for 67 % of our Scope 3 suppliers, resulting in 39% for all suppliers (ie, 58% x 67% = 39%).

Aligned with the Paris Agreement, Nutreco has committed to science-based targets over all three scopes, and we are at a phase of creating a deep understanding of our carbon footprint and the drivers behind it to develop efficient reduction strategies. We are also further improving our data to reduce uncertainties while setting up processes to monitor and validate potential reduction scenarios. It is already clear that this is a challenging task and that there will be no silver bullet to reach our targets. We thus have to focus on different solutions in parallel. The main identified focus areas are the following:

  1. Introducing Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) based metrics into our procurement and formulation systems to quantify, understand and monitor our environmental impact and the drivers behind it.
  2. Engage with our suppliers to drive down our footprint together.
  3. Source deforestation-free to reduce the land use change related footprint.
  4. Identify lower footprint alternatives among novel or circular ingredients.

The introduction of LCA-based metrics in particular helps us to support this overall journey and is a core requirement for all the other points. That is why we want to focus on our past achievements, current challenges and future plans related to LCA in the following section. But first, let’s consider what LCA actually means.

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Life Cycle Assessment 

As one commitment by Nutreco’s Roadmap 2025, Skretting stepped up in developing and implementing Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) based metrics. The internationally standardised method LCA is acknowledged and increasingly applied as the most comprehensive and robust environmental accounting method to assess the environmental footprint of products or organisations. 

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Sustainability report 2021