Environmental stewardship
The environmental data given here are for Siemens’ manufacturing sites, R&D sites and major
office locations. Together, these represent the most important regions in which we do business
and the whole of our product range. Our reporting encompasses all companies in which Siemens
has a majority stake and comprises information compiled for the period of one year. All the data
provided here are for the fiscal year ending on September 30, 2005.
Basis of our reporting
Energy consumption
Carbon dioxide emissions
Water
Waste
Environmental operating expenses and capital spending
Employees in environmental protection
Basis of our reporting
We record and track environmentally relevant data in the Siemens Environmental and Technical Safety
Information System (SESIS), a web-driven database. All company locations and organizational units
whose resource consumption or emissions exceed one or more of the following limits are required to take
part in the system:
Primary energy
1,000 GJ/year
Secondary energy
1,000 GJ/year
Wastewater
1,500 m³/year
Hazardous waste
1 t/year
Non-hazardous waste
10 t/year
Refrigerant (e.g., R22)
50 kg
Direct greenhouse gas emissions (equivalent) 1000 t
Geographical scope
New or acquired locations must be integrated into the information system within three years.
Our reporting covers 282 environmentally relevant locations in 37 countries. In recent years, we have
steadily increased the number of locations: In 2002, the number totaled 229; in fiscal 2005, 25 locations
were added.
The number of locations we track and our environmental relevance as a company change constantly with
the purchase, sale and consolidation of units. In 2005, for example, coverage included OSRAM Sylvania
in America for the first time, a unit whose plants consume significant quantities of energy. And in the
years to come, Siemens Water Technologies (formerly, USFilter), a unit with a high consumption of water,
will be integrated into the system.
The increase in the number of locations included in our reporting system is also due in part to improved
coverage in our data collection.
Areas and installations
A location’s environmental relevance is not determined solely by its emissions or resource consumption
but also by the number of installations on site requiring authorization or notification. Whether or not an
installation is classed as notifiable or requiring authorization varies greatly from country to country and
depends on local regulations and authorities’ standard practices. With the addition of our new locations,
the number of installations requiring notification or authorization has risen to 1,041. As was the case a
year earlier, the majority of installations that fall into these categories are relevant on account of their air
emissions; the next-largest category are those that use substances that pose a potential threat to water
quality.
For the first time, our reporting also includes worldwide trends in energy consumption and volumes of
carbon dioxide, waste and wastewater. They begin in fiscal 2002 and are given in absolute quantities. No
baseline adjustment has been made, so the figures also include locations that today are no longer part of
Siemens.
Energy consumption
Energy consumption
For many years now, we have made intensive efforts to increase our energy efficiency for both ecological
and economic reasons. However, such factors as weather conditions, production capacity utilization and
changes in our product range have a considerable impact on our total energy use. Our figures for 2005
show an increase in Siemens’ worldwide energy consumption in both relative and absolute terms.
This is due to the inclusion of a number of new locations in our reporting. These include 18 locations of
OSRAM Sylvania, the American arm of our OSRAM lighting unit. OSRAM’s processes, including the
manufacture of glass, aluminum oxide, molybdenum, and tungsten, are often energy-intensive, and
these locations consume particularly large amounts of electric power and heating energy. This is
reflected in our heat consumption at American locations overall, which in 2005 totaled 515 kWh/m².
Without the OSRAM Sylvania facilities, it would have been just 160 kWh/m².
This highlights the difficulty of organization-wide reporting in a company like Siemens with a complex
product portfolio: Individual company units may increase their energy efficiency yet the overall efficiency
company-wide appears to drop. The apparent decline in our performance in this instance is due to
portfolio changes rather than to a deterioration in efficiency.
Energy consumption without OSRAM Sylvania
Heating energy is calculated by aggregating all primary energy sources and district heating/cooling
energy. Our heating requirements are similar in scale to our electric power requirements. Our
area-specific energy consumption per square meter of net floor area totaled 525 kilowatt hours.
To produce heat, we are continuing to intensify our reliance on district heating and natural gas. These
energy sources cover 94 percent of our heating needs.
Carbon dioxide emissions
Carbon dioxide emissions
Siemens reports all carbon dioxide emissions resulting from the generation of electricity and heat. In
fiscal 2005, carbon dioxide emissions across the company totaled approximately 2.75 million metric tons.
This adds up to an emission rate of 205 kg per square meter of net floor area. The majority of these
emissions were not produced by Siemens itself but can be attributed to the purchase of electricity.
Reporting does not include logistics in the form of goods transport or passenger transportation.
Just as with the calculation of energy consumption, primary energy sources, and district heating and
cooling are taken into account in the calculation of carbon dioxide emissions from heating. The figures for
district heating are based on the assumption that heat extracted from the power generation process
produces 0.146 kg of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour.
The increase in carbon dioxide emissions is due to the high energy consumption of the new locations
now included in our reporting.
Water
Wastewater volumes
In fiscal 2005, Siemens consumed approximately 24 million cubic meters of raw water worldwide. We
obtain 55 percent of our water from our own sources. Wastewater from manufacturing processes, cooling
water and wastewater from canteens and other employee facilities are reported as separate categories.
Not including cooling water, the amount of water consumed by the whole of Siemens amounts to 110
liters per employee per day.
Wastewater without OSRAM Sylvania
The new locations included in our reporting are water-intensive as well as energy-intensive. The chart
shows that, without them, volumes of manufacturing and cooling water would have been lower than in the
past.
The volume of wastewater from canteens and employee facilities in Asia needs to be viewed slightly
differently because a number of our locations there have on-campus employee housing that is connected
to the same wastewater infrastructure as manufacturing installations and office buildings, and data on
canteen and employee facility wastewater is not collected separately.
Waste
Waste volumes
We differentiate between hazardous and non-hazardous waste as well as between recyclable and
disposable waste. As the volumes of construction and demolition waste greatly depend on construction
and demolition projects and have a strong influence on the overall waste balance, they are reported in a
separate category. Our statistics only cover the waste generated by Siemens. They do not include waste
that we dispose of under contract from our customers.
By far the largest amount of our waste – 76 percent – is recycled. Although the overall waste volume has
increased with the addition of new locations, with 870 kilograms per employee per year the amount of
waste (excluding construction waste) is at roughly the same level as last year (2004: 1,000 kilograms per
employee per year).
Waste volume without OSRAM Sylvania
Environmental operating expenses and capital spending
In fiscal 2005, our operating expenses and capital spending on environmental protection ran to €45
million and €23 million, respectively. As in previous years, most of our expenditure for conventional
environmental protection measures in our operations was on waste management and water protection,
followed closely by air pollution prevention.
Capital spending and operating expenses that are clearly associated with an environmentally relevant
field – for example, air quality or noise – are included in the costs of environmental protection. This
applies both to end-of-pipe solutions and to production-integrated measures. We also include
expenditures in connection with setting up and maintaining environmental management systems.
In terms of our environmental spending, the fact that environmental protection is integral to our business
processes and is taken into account in product development, manufacturing, sales, and marketing is a
good thing. Our factories often engage in measures which are driven by manufacturing or business
requirements but which also benefit the environment. However, the expenditure associated with such
measures is not reported as environmental spending. As a result, we actually spend more on initiatives to
ease the burden on the environment than we actually show in our reporting.
Environmental protection has been an important issue for Siemens for a long time. Investments such as
the building of waste water treatment plants, air abatement systems or the implementation of
management systems have been made and only need to be maintained. Past expenditures still pay off
today and we spend less for environment. In 1995, for example, our expenditures in this area ran to
around €110 million.
Employees in environmental protection
Around 500 experts and officers worldwide – at company headquarters and in our operating Groups,
Regional Companies and factories – have specific environmental duties and responsibilities. This equals
a full-time equivalent headcount of 200 people. However, these figures are not truly representative, as
we expect all employees to be environmentally conscious, and all management-level employees are
required to lead by example. In addition, environmental protection plays an integral role in the
development of new products, making it a core concern for all of the many research and development
engineers at Siemens.