Sustainable development is founded on financial, social and environmental change, and ÅF recognises its responsibility for the impact the company has in all three of these areas.
This impact can take the form of ÅF’s influences on local trade and industry, the natural environment, its employees, owners, clients, suppliers and other stakeholders. ÅF has considerable opportunity to influence the development of its clients’ businesses, and in this respect ÅF shoulders a great responsibility for making sure that development is undertaken in a sustainable manner. The ambition is always to endeavour to safeguard long-term success and sustainable development for both its clients and for ÅF itself. That ambition also forms the basis for the ÅF mission statement: "ÅF’s collective technical expertise and experience create solutions that are profitable, safe and sustainable."
ÅF works to achieve this ambition in many ways, some of which are described below.
Work environment at ÅF
ÅF does all it can to ensure co-workers of an unbeatable environment in which to work. In 2008 Universum conducted a survey among young engineers who ranked ÅF as the most attractive employer among Swedish technical consulting companies.
Sustainable ownership
Ångpanneföreningen’s Foundation for Research and Development is one of the company’s largest shareholders and uses some of its earnings as an owner to offer support in the form of research grants and scholarships to projects at Sweden’s universities, colleges and research institutes in fields that include energy, environmental engineering, security and industrial processes.
Environmental work
ÅF AB and its subsidiaries are certified in accordance with ISO 9001: 2000 (quality) and ISO 14001: 2004 (environment). The most significant aspect of ÅF’s environmental work is indirect via the effect that its consulting services have on its clients’ environmental performance. Other aspects are the company’s own, direct environmental impact in the form of business travel and electricity consumption in its offices. As a technical consultant ÅF can make a big difference to its clients’ environmental impact. This is often a question of improving energy efficiency in buildings or processes, but it also includes the choice of materials and management of chemicals, reducing the risk of accidents that can affect people and the environment, or improving client skills through training. In addition there are opportunities to investigate and analyse alternative purification techniques, calculate or mitigate environmental impact in the form of emissions to air, noise or odours, or simply to help clients with their strategic sustainability work.
Even if the indirect effect ÅF can exert via its clients is far in excess of the impact the company itself exerts on the environment, it is nevertheless very important to work with these internal factors and, as a leading technical consultant, to set a good example.
Environmental targets
In 2008 ÅF resolved to adopt entirely new environmental objectives for its operational activities. 2008 is the base year for the new objectives and for the new key values. After the results have been analysed, three new environmental objectives will be adopted: two for the company’s direct environmental impact (through its own internal operations) and one for the company’s indirect impact (through the assignments ÅF carries out for its clients).
Electricity consumption in office premises
ÅF does not own its office premises but the company does have an opportunity to influence its landlords and its own consumption of resources. Figures from ÅF offices are logged and analysed to find a reasonable target level, where the ambition is to be in the best quartile among comparable organisations. In 2008 ÅF’s head office moved to new premises, a so-called "Green Building" in Solna, north of Stockholm.
Travel
Modes of travel, distances and carbon dioxide emissions were measured and analysed in 2008. Targets for reducing the environmental impact of travel will be set with effect from 2009 onwards. Here, too, the ambition is to be among the best in the industry. ÅF is working to develop IT applications that will reduce the need for physical meetings, for example, by increasing the number of web meetings.
Indirect impact through client assignments
ÅF’s indirect impact is the greatest and perhaps the most important. As the nature of assignments differs widely between divisions, each division will set its own targets for how to reduce environmental impact through the assignments it carries out. Each division established target areas in 2008, but the detailed work of formulating the targets is still ongoing.
Energy Division
Target areas: Environmental services and energy services
The majority of assignments have a positive effect on the environment since most of the division’s consulting work comprises environmental, energy and climate services in conjunction with investigating or improving clients’ environmental performance.
To use its consulting services to make further inroads into reducing the environmental impact of its clients’ activities, the division is committed in 2009 to working to increase the degree of environmental benefit in its assignments as well as to increase the overall number of environment-related assignments. This work includes working on target areas such as energy efficiency, conversion to new fuels and further improvements with regard to the environmental benefit in other services.
Engineering Division
Target area: Biofuels
The Engineering Division has seen a clear increase in the number of industrial projects involving biofuels and is therefore amassing competence in this highly interesting growth area. The division plans to start a Biofuels business area in 2009 in order to capitalise on its extensive technical expertise in the chemical, petrochemical and other process industries with regard to process design and the project engineering of biofuel production facilities.
Current projects include, for example, biogas generation from food waste and black liquor, and the project engineering of ethanol and biogas production plants.
Infrastructure Division
Target areas: Energy efficiency and eco-design
Today ÅF has almost 100 experts who work on energy efficiency measures in clients’ plants. Experience shows clearly that it is in the actual operation of the plant that the greatest savings can be made. For this reason, work usually focuses on ensuring that all fixed installations, equipment and apparatus is used as effectively as possible. The services that ÅF offers in this field extend from qualified energy-mapping and proposals for action plans to full-service undertakings that include responsibility for the implementation and realisation of the savings.
Eco-design is the name given to the process of developing products that are better adapted to the environment by ensuring that they are designed from the start to minimise impact on the environment throughout their entire life cycle. Examples include products that are energy-efficient and recyclable. Eco-design also paves the way towards the evolution of products and services for a sustainable society through the intelligent use of resources and raw materials, and the optimisation of functionality, quality and cost through a fully integrated approach to environmental work. ÅF’s services in this area are offered through the ÅF EcoDesign Center.
Inspection Division
Target area: Risks
The main emphasis of the Inspection Division’s services lies in assessing whether clients’ plant and equipment meets current safety and environmental criteria. Clients can then use ÅF’s assessment to prevent any negative environmental impact.
To use its consulting services to make further inroads into reducing the environmental impact of its clients’ activities, the division will endeavour in 2009 to increase the number of assignments where a breakdown would lead to a severe negative impact. This initiative includes educating clients about current regulations so that, by preventive maintenance, they can carry out operations and run their plants safely and in an optimal way from an environmental perspective.