Life cycle assessment of a wind farm
Taking the entire life cycle of the turbines into account, wind power produces by far the lowest amount of carbon emissions of all energy sources. In 2021, we had an extensive location-specific life cycle assessment conducted for our wind farm Poysdorf-Wilfersdorf V, covering the entire life cycle of the wind farm. The result? Wind power produces just 8.5 – 12.5 g carbon emissions for each kilowatt-hour generated.
The life cycle assessment also verified the impressive energy efficiency of wind power. Over a 13-month span, wind turbines generate enough energy to produce, build and dismantle the turbine, generating 18 times as much over 20 years. In addition, 89% of each turbine can be recycled. Moving forward, we plan to increase our focus on the areas where potential improvements are possible and incorporate these areas when planning our next wind farms.
Life cycle assessment of wind energy
Wind energy causes by far the lowest CO2 emissions of all energy sources, calculated over the lifetime of the turbines.
Material composition
Wind farm
Material composition
Wind turbine
Corporate Carbon Footprint
The corporate carbon footprint of a company encompasses all greenhouse gas emissions, converted into CO2 equivalents (CO2e), directly or indirectly produced by a company. It is split into three scopes.
Scope 1 covers direct emissions, namely direct emissions that are owned or controlled by a company. Examples include fossil fuel consumption by company cars or emissions from in-house energy production.
Scope 2 covers indirect emissions, namely the use of district heating and cooling as well as externally sourced electricity.
Scope 3 covers all other indirect emissions. For example, Scope 3 includes the entire upstream and downstream supply chain as well as waste disposal, commuting and business travel (this category was not included in the 2023 footprint).
For the CO2 footprint calculation of Windkraft Simonsfeld, Scopes 1 & 2 were calculated for the year 2023 (see chart), i.e. this value corresponds to the direct CO2 emissions supplemented by the indirect emissions from energy purchases. This value amounts to 71.8 tons of CO2-e for the reporting year.
The majority of our emissions (64%) are caused by the diesel consumption of our service vehicles. Emissions in the electricity sector (16.9%) are mainly caused by our Bulgarian subsidiary, as it is not possible to purchase green electricity in Bulgaria. We want to fully electrify our fleet of service vehicles by 2026 and will thus be able to significantly reduce our operational CO2 emissions.