As part of its commitment to reduce its environmental impact, the LEGO Group has entered a $2.4 million agreement with the pioneering carbon-removal company, Climeworks as it looks to progress towards net-zero carbon emissions.
The agreement is to use Climeworks’ direct air capture and storage technology for the permanent removal of hard-to-abate CO2 emissions from the air.
Working together, the partnership will also help Climeworks accelerate its technology scale-up. KIRKBI, the family-owned holding and investment company of the LEGO brand has signed a $405,000 long-term agreement to procure Climeworks’ services.
In 2023, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated that the use of ‘carbon dioxide removal (CDR) will be necessary to achieve net negative CO2 emissions’.
The LEGO Group states that it takes CO2 emissions into account across all areas of its business and the nine-year agreement means direct air capture and storage will be just one of a number of initiatives designed to help the business achieve its net zero carbon emissions target by 2050.
The toy maker states that its key priority for GHG emissions remains in reducing the impact of its factories, offices and stores, and supply chain. It has a SBTi-approved target to reduce absolute GHG emissions (Scope 1, 2, and 3) by 37% by 2032 with initiatives that include designing buildings to run on renewable energy as well as engaging with suppliers to lower their carbon footprint.
Last year saw the LEGO Group increase spend on environmental initiatives by 60% and by 2025 it plans to have doubled its annual spend compared to 2023.
Annette Stube, chief sustainability officer at the LEGO Group, said: “We want children to inherit a healthy planet – and we’re determined to play our part in making that happen. To succeed we must take action to drive systemic change.
“We were the first large toy company to announce a science-based emissions reduction target in 2020 and we want to continue to lead the way in finding innovative solutions for the challenges we face.
“This is why we are working with Climeworks – their technology, as part of a varied programme of initiatives, can help us and society as a whole realise the net-zero future that is needed to protect our planet for generations to come.”
Climeworks opened the world’s first and largest direct air capture and storage commercial plant, called Orca, in Iceland in 2021 to capture CO2 from the air and store it directly underground.
The process involves the air being drawn into large collector containers where CO2 is captured through a filter. The collected CO2 is then stored deep underground by Climeworks’ storage partner, Carbfix, where it is injected deep into the ground and transformed into stone through an accelerated natural process.
The filtered air is then released back into the atmosphere.
In 2022, Climeworks announced it would build a second plant in Iceland. The site, called Mammoth, is due to open in May this year and will be its largest direct air capture and storage plant, capable of a nominal CO2 capture capacity of up to 36,000 tons per year when fully operational.
Jan Huckfeldt, chief commercial officer at Climeworks, said: “We’re proud to partner with a sustainability leader like the LEGO Group who takes bold steps to make net zero happen. We see demand growing across diverse sectors, including consumer goods, which shows that carbon removal rightly has a place in every company’s net zero strategy.”
