Commitment, sustainability and environmental protection
At ThyssenKrupp, we regard taking responsibility for society, the environment and the climate as the natural duty of a successful business enterprise. We sponsor art and culture, promote a better understanding of technology among the general public and offer our customers innovative products and our employees attractive jobs. Our eco-friendly achievements on the world market contribute to sustainable climate protection. All of this also supports the concrete business of our Group.
Commitment to society
ThyssenKrupp is involved in a wide range of projects – be it in culture, education and sport or in social, charitable and humanitarian activities. In this, we are guided by criteria based on the Group's understanding of value and responsibility. We sponsor humanitarian projects, support the philharmonic orchestras in Essen and Duisburg and are involved in selected sporting competitions such as the annual Rhine-Ruhr Marathon.
Innovation for the future
Alongside wide-ranging cooperation with research institutes and universities in Germany and abroad, we collaborate intensively with seven partner universities in Germany. At several universities – including Tongji University in Shanghai – we finance individual chairs. All contacts and collaborations promote the dialogue between education, research and industry, to the benefit of both the scientific community and the Group's applications-oriented development projects.
In the past fiscal year, ThyssenKrupp spent €841 million on research and development. We had more than 3,500 scientists and technicians at 85 development centers and departments working on new and improved products and processes. More information on our projects is provided in the "Innovations" section.
Ideas Park attracts 280,000 visitors
In 2007/2008, our initiative "Discovering future technology" continued to promote dialogue on technology across all areas of society and all age groups. Young people – the engineers of the future – are a key target group of the initiative, and our Ideas Park technology experience, staged in May 2008 in Stuttgart, was aimed particularly at them. With free admission, more than 280,000 people took the opportunity to find out about fascinating technology, put questions to experts or even carry out their own small projects. Some 500 engineers, researchers and students presented their ideas. The aim of these activities is to increase acceptance of technology among young people, on whom our society and we as a technology group are so dependent.
Employees are the key to success
The talent, creativity and commitment of our employees and executives are key to ThyssenKrupp's business success. That's why we provide a wide range of apprenticeship training opportunities and look to attract promising young talent from universities and colleges. We also provide numerous training and education programs for our skilled staff and executives. Further information on our workforce is provided in the "Employees" section.
On September 30, 2008, around 57% of our employees were working outside Germany. For a global group like ThyssenKrupp, internationally oriented training measures and employee contacts are therefore of particular importance. These measures are tailored to specific job-related and personal circumstances and are therefore mainly carried out in our operating segments.
One outstanding example is the global "SEED Campus" in the Elevator segment, comprising training centers in Europe and Asia to prepare experienced employees and new recruits from all areas of the company for their future duties. From February 2008, the first eleven participants from various countries of Asia took part in the fast-track program of the newly established SEED Campus Asia Pacific. The entry-level programs offered by the SEED Campus Europe in the past fiscal year were attended by 44 participants from 21 countries, including Spain, Italy, Germany, Kazakhstan, India, China, Brazil and the USA.
The Technologies segment also promotes international exchanges. In Russia, for example, a strategic cooperation agreement has been concluded with the technical state university of Nizhny Novgorod. Technologies also has an international trainee program aimed at young management staff from eight countries and providing 80 possibilities for rotation across companies. This approach is systematically followed up in the international Development Center, which prepares them for the move to the upper management levels.
Gaining a global insight into operations at other companies in the segment is an important part of the employee development process at Stainless. National and international job rotation strengthens intercultural skills and is also available to young participants as part of their trainee program, tailored to their individual stage of development.
The Steel segment also aims to sensitize employees to the increasing internationality of its operations at an early stage and offers young high-potentials interesting and attractive trainee placements at foreign companies.
Social standards in labor relations
ThyssenKrupp accepts social responsibility for its employees around the world. We comply with all national labor law standards and are committed to the principle of equal opportunity and the diversity of people and cultures all over the world. A preventive health policy, safety at the workplace and good working conditions are key elements of our management responsibility. These aspects are set out as guidelines in Group works framework agreements.
The Executive Board of ThyssenKrupp AG has concluded a global agreement with the Group Works Council and the European Works Council in which discrimination against members of the workforce is strictly rejected. The guidelines communicated in this Code of Conduct are one of the reasons why cooperation among employees at our locations around the world is shaped by tolerance and mutual respect.
Sustainable environmental protection
Greater resource and energy efficiency
Conserving natural resources and making the most efficient use of energy helps protect the environment and at the same time makes our Group more cost-efficient. Sustainability and climate protection are therefore in the long-term interests of ThyssenKrupp. In the reporting period we once again made significant progress in the areas of air pollution control, water protection, noise control and landscape protection. At €511 million, our expenditure for the operation of pollution control equipment was almost exactly the same as in the prior year. Investment in environmental protection was up 15% at €71 million. This increase mainly relates to the new blast furnace 8 in Duisburg, which is equipped with state-of-the-art pollution control equipment.
| 2003/2004 | 2004/2005 | 2005/2006 | 2006/2007 | 2007/2008 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Air pollution control | 124 | 141 | 141 | 183 | 182 | |||||
| Water protection | 177 | 165 | 168 | 204 | 201 | |||||
| Noise control/landscape protection | 12 | 15 | 16 | 24 | 16 | |||||
| Recycling | 64 | 81 | 87 | 109 | 112 | |||||
| Total | 377 | 402 | 412 | 520 | 511 |
Ongoing expenditure on environmental protection 2007/2008 in %
During the construction of the new blast furnace in Duisburg, the Steel segment spent around €80 million on environmental protection equipment, almost a third of the overall investment. All emissions are below the thresholds set out in the relevant environmental guidelines. Dust emissions are more than 20% lower than previous levels. A unique dust collection system was installed to capture emissions during unloading of our raw materials from rail cars. In developing this system, our environmental engineers advanced the state of the art. Measurements carried out together with the responsible environmental agency have proven that the new blast furnace produces virtually no uncontrolled dust emissions. Noise emissions have also been drastically reduced.
The new steel mill and processing plant being built by Steel and Stainless in Alabama will have an advanced acid regeneration unit which will greatly reduce nitrate levels in waste water. Acids from the annealing and pickling lines will be processed extremely effectively. This is the best technology currently available in terms of both economy and ecology.
As part of the construction of our new steel mill in Brazil, we have launched three projects under the UN's "Clean Development Mechanism". They will be used to generate electricity in a highly efficient combined cycle power plant using blast furnace gas and heat recovered from the coke plant. Utilizing efficient gas and steam turbine technology, the power plant combines the principles of a gas turbine power plant with those of a steam power plant and achieves a very high level of efficiency. It will be the first power plant of its kind on the entire American continent.
The projects are currently undergoing the prescribed processes for UN recognition and are expected to reduce CO2 emissions by 4.7 million tons during the ten-year operating period. Tradable emission credits can be issued for these reductions.
Our Steel segment used the new "Direct Flame Impingement (DFI) Oxyfuel" furnace technology for the first time on a hot-dip coating line and on a coil galvanizing and aluminizing line. The process delivered outstanding results from the outset: It boosted performance, product quality and energy efficiency and reduced direct CO2 emissions by 5%.
The Stainless segment started operation of a new waste air purification plant at its cold strip mill in Krefeld to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions. We also started construction of an acid regeneration plant to recover the acids used in production and reduce the levels of hazardous substances in waste water.
Since 2007 ThyssenKrupp Waupaca has been using a new iron melting furnace with heat recovery, which has lowered emissions and reduced the overall operating costs of the foundry. With this new system, Waupaca is regarded by the US foundry industry as a technology leader in waste gas purification and heat recovery.
In Dortmund, the 37 hectare surface of a former landfill site is currently being sealed for subsequent recultivation. We are investing €11 million in this project, which began in 2006 and is scheduled for completion by mid-2010.
Attractive solutions and innovations to protect the environment
Our commitment to environmental protection and sustainability is also reflected in products and processes that allow our customers to be more eco-friendly. Steel and high-performance alloys in particular make cost-effective climate protection possible in many areas.
- Improving efficiency and reducing CO2 emissions are the challenges facing the coal-fired power plants of the future. One way of achieving this is to use extremely high steam temperatures which offer greater efficiency but necessitate new boiler and turbine materials. In collaboration with power plant operators and manufacturers of power plant boilers, the Stainless segment has developed an alloy variant which has already demonstrated its suitability in a pilot 700 degree power plant.
- A research project being conducted jointly by ThyssenKrupp, RWE Power and the Fraunhofer Society is aimed at further reducing development times for new materials. Laboratory experiments on high-grade materials allow their behavior under load to be predicted by simulations. The advantage: Researchers can identify possibly weaknesses in advance and develop alternative solutions; in this way, for example, more environmentally friendly power plants can also be built more quickly.
- Our innovative high-performance titanium alloys reduce weight and fuel costs in aircraft construction.
- We use our innovative casting and rolling technologies to produce high-quality electrical steel which reduces energy losses (e.g. in transformers and generators) by up to 19%.
- Nickel W14 is a new material for high-temperature superconductors used in generators for wind turbines. These superconductors allow wind turbines to operate in the 10 MW to 12 MW range and thus make the electricity they generate more economical.
- The world's first industrial-scale plant to produce propylene oxide using the innovative HPPO process has gone into operation in Korea. The plant has an annual capacity of 100,000 metric tons. Propylene oxide is used for example in the production of coolants and disinfectants. The new process – developed and licensed by Evonik Industries and our subsidiary Uhde – is extremely eco-friendly: It offers a high yield, and the only by-product is water. By contrast, conventional production plants severely pollute the waste water. With environmental regulations being tightened all the time, this innovative, by-product-free process has a very bright future.
- Uhde, a plant engineering company from the Technologies segment, is building three diesel and gasoline desulfurization plants which will allow the customers to switch to low-sulfur fuel production. In the past seven years, Uhde has now designed and built plants of this kind with a total capacity of 33 million tons.
Climate protection as a corporate responsibility
Climate protection is an important challenge, including for ThyssenKrupp. We respond to this challenge by using environmentally friendly production processes and by producing materials, components and plants which avoid greenhouse gas emissions or render them harmless.
ULCOS: Research to minimize CO2 emissions
Because iron production by the blast furnace route requires among other things large amounts of coke as a reducing agent, producing one ton of steel currently generates 1.5 tons of CO2. Since we have almost reached the theoretical minimum for the use of reducing agents of 414 kg carbon per ton of pig iron, the scope for reducing CO2 emissions is also largely exhausted.
Our Steel segment has therefore joined forces with 47 other companies and institutions from 15 European countries in the research project ULCOS (Ultra Low CO2 Steelmaking), which aims to develop new steel production technologies that will reduce CO2 emissions by half. The program is financed by the participating companies and from European Union funds. In a first project phase, the consortium identified suitable concepts. Demonstration lines are now to be built in a second phase to test the extent to which the technologies can be developed for industrial-scale use. This will take time: It could be another 15 to 20 years before the technology can be applied on a commercial scale.
Conversion to gas power
In response to dwindling oil reserves and high CO2 emissions, we have launched initial tests on converting our vehicle fleets to dual-fuel systems. The engines of these vehicles can be switched simply to run on gasoline or natural gas.
Laughing gas as a climate killer
Eleven EnviNOX® plants developed by our Technologies segment are currently under construction or in operation to convert laughing gas, which is damaging to the climate, into nitrogen, oxygen and water. In the future they will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of 8.5 million tons of CO2 per year. For example, the production of one ton of nitric acid generates around 7 kg of laughing gas, which to date has been emitted into the atmosphere with the tail gases from the plant. If all the more than 300 nitric acid plants installed around the world were fitted with the EnviNOX® system, this would reduce greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 120 million tons of CO2.
Although the concentration of laughing gas in the atmosphere to date is around a thousand times lower than carbon dioxide, it is roughly 300 times more harmful to the environment. It rises constantly into the atmosphere – mainly as a decomposition product of nitrogen fertilizers, from the combustion of biomass and as emissions from nitric acid production plants – where it is enriched. To make matters worse, the laughing gas is then split by the sun's rays into molecules which attack the ozone layer. That makes the protection provided by our EnviNOX® process all the more important.
For more information on products and processes which help protect the environment and the climate, turn to the Innovations section.