Palsgaard Wins Environmental Award

In 2005 Palsgaard built the largest privately owned straw-fired burner in Denmark, thereby replacing heavy fuel oil as the heat source for the entire company with 80% of the straw sourced from the company’s own agricultural land.

7 Dec 2009 --- Palsgaard has won the Danish environmental award, “Wise m2” for its CO2 reductions for the past year. For the past 4 years, Danish building society Realkredit Danmark has been awarding Danish companies who have made an extra effort in reducing their CO2 emissions. Of the 18 regional winners only 3 companies including Palsgaard have been selected to participate in the national competition, which will be decided on 6th January 2010.

When presenting the regional award to Palsgaard chairman, Birger Brix, Realkredit Danmark spokes person Arne Wendelbo explained that Palsgaard was presented with the award in recognition of the company’s high focus on optimizing its energy consumption, as it is part of Palsgaard’s basic philosophy to incorporate energy savings and CO2 reductions into new developments of both its production plants and administration facilities. A philosophy which has already resulted in many efforts to reduce the company’s CO2 emissions:

In 2005 Palsgaard built the largest privately owned straw-fired burner in Denmark, thereby replacing heavy fuel oil as the heat source for the entire company with 80% of the straw sourced from the company’s own agricultural land. This has reduced Palsgaard’s oil consumption significantly and reduced its CO2 emissions by 1,900 MT.

In 2009 Palsgaard converted from heavy fuel to natural gas as the main energy source for its production facilities, thereby obtaining a cleaner energy source, as the CO2 emissions are much lower from natural gas than from fuel oil and reducing its CO2 emissions by 1,244 MT.

Along with additional energy saving activities such as implementing intelligent light control Palsgaard has been able to reduce its CO2 emissions by 3,735 MT per year, equivalent to approximately 1250 MT of oil.

In his acceptance speech Birger Brix explained: “We are an energy-intensive company, and our energy savings have also been driven by financial reasons in a competitive world. However, we already started focussing on acting in a more environmentally friendly manner several years ago and have gotten used to caring for the environment. In our daily activities, we also like to remind our employees to care for the environment. Many of the ideas for energy-savings actually come from our own employees.”