ABB's Anke Hampel on Scope 3 Transparency

ABB Group’s sustainability story is one of innovation and determination, with Anke Hampel at the helm.

As the Group Head of Sustainability, Anke champions transparency and robust Scope 3 reporting as essential tools for reshaping supply chains into engines of sustainability.

ABB, with its 140-year legacy in electrification and automation, isn’t just about technical brilliance; it’s about applying that ingenuity where it counts.

From powering London Underground’s Sub-Surface Railway lines to equipping NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover with durable Ty-Rap cable ties, ABB’s influence reaches both the subterranean and the extra-terrestrial.

Behind these milestones are 105,000 employees committed to creating a future that’s sustainable and resource-efficient.

Anke, who joined ABB in late 2022, brings a distinctive approach shaped by her extensive procurement expertise and time spent in the consumer goods and packaging industries, including roles at Tetra Pak and Procter & Gamble.

Her leadership highlights the critical role of transparency in addressing Scope 3 emissions, making sustainable supply chains an achievable reality in industries worldwide.

What are ABB's sustainability goals and how are you working towards them?

At ABB, our sustainability agenda is at the core of our purpose. We operate with integrity and transparency at a time when many companies are actually choosing not to talk about their ambition or to reduce their ambition. 

We have three pillars that are driving us towards our goals;

• Enabling a low carbon society.
• Promoting social progress. 
• Preserving resources. 

We have committed to reaching net zero by 2050 and to partnering with our customers to avoid emissions. 

Achieving this involves aligning our actions with the International Energy Agency’s net zero pathway, which aims to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. It indicates that by 2030, we need to triple
renewable energy and double energy efficiency. ABB has already made significant progress, reaching 94% renewable energy in 2023 and “committing to 100% by 2030. ABB has also reduced its own emissions by 76% versus 2019.

In addition to carbon reductions, we need to focus on reducing methane emissions by 75%, as methane has 25 times higher global warming potential than CO2. ABB’s process automation business offers solutions such as methane leakage detection equipment to help achieve this goal.

Similarly, all new heavy industry equipment investments must be net zero capable, highlighting the urgency of ensuring that long-lifespan assets contribute to sustainability. 

Our four business areas - electrification, process automation, motion and robotics and automation - are each contributing to these sustainability efforts. 

How is ABB approaching the reduction of its Scope 3 emissions across its value chain and what innovations or collaborations are helping drive progress in this area?

ABB’s ambitious sustainability goals include a commitment to reduce its Scope 3 emissions by 90% by 2050, with 2022 as the baseline. This target was validated in 2023, earning the company recognition including a CDP ‘A’ status, placing it among the top 10% of companies submitting to the Carbon Disclosure Project. ABB has also been awarded triple-A status by MSCI ESG for its renewed goals and progress. 

96% of ABB’s value chain emissions actually come from the use of sold products, so-called Category 11 of Scope 3. To tackle this we are driving business with our customers to decarbonise, to optimise and to electrify. 

In your opinion, how should the current methodologies for reporting and assessing corporate emissions evolve to create more accurate, transparent and actionable data? 

There are lots of things in reporting that aren’t perfect – the greenhouse gas protocol, which is the standard we have today, is 13 years old. In the US, 73% of companies have made a commitment to reduce their emissions. Despite all the discussions we are seeing, only 43% actually have science-based targets and have near term targets that are defined and validated. 

Integrity and transparency are essential for ABB. We use the lifetime that we are promoting to our customers for carbon reporting, which can easily be 25 years. We have motors that are coming in for maintenance that have been in use for more than 70 years. In emissions accounting, there are companies that say 'all my products have a maximum 15-year lifetime expectation' for the benefit of their carbon accounting.

If I extend the lifetime of my products, it's increasing the emissions – unless I'm at low emissions energy use for these products.  The majority of our emissions are generated when our products are used by our customers, so it very much depends on what they're using – if they're not using low carbon or renewable energy, then the emissions are just going up. This is a crucial part of transparency for ABB’s Scope 3 emissions reporting. 

How does ABB integrate life cycle analysis and circularity into its product development and operations?

We are focusing on eliminating waste and driving resource efficiency and we do this by embedding circularity into our product portfolio from the design phase. We are also looking at protecting water, biodiversity and having a positive impact on land use. Our water management solutions are an important part of our business and it's an area that’s growing extremely fast. 

Talking about the circularity framework, there is no such thing as a greenhouse gas protocol when it comes to circularity. How do you measure circularity? No standard exists. ISO had just launched one, but the ISO standards are normally just the absolute minimum. It's not in line with the ambitions that we have been setting as a company when we develop this. 

Instead our model actually focuses on the life cycles. This has been benchmarked with the World Business Council of Sustainable Development and they have taken it now as an inspiration for the development of the global circularity protocol. So this work is accelerating as the future Global Circularity Protocol is expected to be launching at COP30 in Brazil. 

How does ABB prioritise emissions avoidance compared to emissions reduction in its sustainability strategy? How do they contribute differently to ABB’s overall carbon reduction goals?

We are particularly driven to avoid emissions – any emission that is not happening is the best emission we can think of. 

A lot of companies have been mixing up saving emissions, avoiding emissions and talking about Scope 4, which is not really a thing and gives you the indication that it's part of the greenhouse gas protocol, which it is not. Instead, we have taken the strict guidance from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) in order to be credible, resulting in 74 megatonnes of avoided emissions in 2023. 

Measuring how we are doing all of this is another indication that we are taking this seriously. We're trying to do the right thing. We're focusing on putting zero waste to landfill, extending lifetimes, driving efficiency of our product and then offering take back options to our customers to make sure that we are ideally using not primary but secondary raw materials.

It is important to measure all these things. So this goes back to the point on transparency and this is what we have published in our 2023 sustainability report and I'm very happy to share that we got a 99.3 approval level from our shareholders during our AGM in March this year.

This was the first mandatory vote on sustainability reports in Switzerland based on the Swiss code of obligations. We are in the top five, meaning we are one of only five companies who received a positive rating of 99 for our rating approval level from the shareholders for their sustainability report.

We also just received the 2024 Swiss Sustainability Reporting Excellence Award based on an analysis by the University of St. Gallen. We have come in first in terms of data disclosed and second in terms of overall impression and credibility out of 235 reports assessed. 

To read the full story, please click HERE.

Receive the next edition of Scope 3 Magazine by signing up for its newsletter. 

As part of this portfolio, make sure you check out Procurement Magazine and also sign up to our global conference series - Procurement & Supply Chain LIVE.

Scope 3 Magazine is a BizClik brand.