From Ambition to Action: Owens Corning Moves To Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions

NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / August 2, 2023 / Owens Corning

Owens Corning is in a unique position. While more than 60 percent of the company's revenues come from composites, insulation, and roofing products that help make homes and buildings energy efficient, the processes that create those products have historically generated their own significant greenhouse gas footprint.

Taking the position that manufacturers must step into a lead role in combating climate change, Owens Corning has committed to make dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the decade. Using 2018 as a base year, the company aims to halve direct emissions from its manufacturing operations (Scope 1), as well as emissions from the generation of the electricity it purchases (Scope 2), by 2030. It's also looking to cut value chain (Scope 3) emissions by 30 percent this decade.

The company has already made significant progress on those goals, having achieved a 22 percent reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions since 2018, according to its latest sustainability report. More than half (around 56 percent) of the electricity the company used in 2022 came from renewable sources, including wind, hydro, solar and geothermal energy.

"These results move the company closer to its goal of a 50 percent reduction in absolute Scope 1 and Scope 2 market-based GHG emissions by 2030," Owens Corning's director of sustainability, Julie Childers, told TriplePundit. "In the areas where there is room to do more, like Scope 3 emissions, we're making investments in our people and processes to unlock ideas and move in the right direction."

Moving renewable energy goals from ambition to implementation

Owens Corning is now on its third-generation sustainability goals. Sourcing renewable energy and improving energy efficiency were central to all of those ambitions. And the company has come a long way in defining what that means in practice.

"Our last two sets of goals were designed to really understand how that electricity was generated," Childers said. "We built methodology in our databases to better track and drive to renewable sources." In 2015, the company invested in two large wind farms that now account for almost half of its electricity use in the U.S.

"As we moved into our third-generation goals, we set science-based targets for our greenhouse gas emissions and aligned a renewable electricity goal of 100 percent for the same period," Childers said. "This is an exciting time for us as we continue down this journey and expand our renewable electricity usage into other countries where we operate."