Lego Climeworks partnership builds upon recent successes in direct air carbon capture.
In a bold move to continue to reduce its environmental impact, the iconic toymaker has inked a $2.4 million deal to capture carbon. Lego Climeworks is an initiative for direct air capture and storage. The agreement aims to permanently remove hard-to-abate carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere, accelerating LEGO’s progress toward achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
The Danish company, renowned for its colorful plastic bricks beloved by generations of children, is leaving no stone unturned in its quest for sustainability. Besides the Climeworks partnership, LEGO has adopted a comprehensive approach, investing heavily in renewable energy and energy efficiency, engaging suppliers to reduce their carbon footprints, and now direct air carbon capture with the LEGO Climeworks partnership.
“We want children to inherit a healthy planet – and we’re determined to play our part in making that happen,” said Annette Stube, Chief Sustainability Officer at the LEGO Group. “To succeed, we must take action to drive systemic change.”
The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has emphasized the necessity of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) to achieve net-negative CO2 emissions. Climeworks’ direct air capture and storage (DAC+S) solution can play a crucial role in this endeavor, permanently storing captured carbon dioxide deep underground through mineralization.
In 2023, LEGO increased its spending on environmental initiatives by a staggering 60% compared to the previous year, with plans to double its annual expenditure by 2025. While reducing emissions from its factories, offices, stores, and supply chain remains the top priority, innovations beyond the value chain are deemed valuable in accelerating progress; the LEGO Climeworks initiative is yet another way the company continues to innovate in this regard.
Climeworks’ groundbreaking Orca plant in Iceland, the world’s largest DAC+S commercial facility, has been operational since 2021. The captured CO2 is injected deep into the ground and transformed into stone through an accelerated natural process facilitated by Climeworks’ storage partner, Carbfix.
Building on this success, Climeworks is set to open its largest DAC+S plant, dubbed Mammoth, in May 2024. With a nominal CO2 capture capacity of up to 36,000 tons per year when fully operational, the facility will further bolster Climeworks’ ability to provide high-quality carbon removal services to its growing client base, which includes multinational corporations like Microsoft, BCG, UBS, and Swiss Re.
“We’re proud to partner with a sustainability leader like the LEGO Group who takes bold steps to make net zero happen,” said Jan Huckfeldt, Chief Commercial Officer at Climeworks. “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,” said Stube when discussing the LEGO Climeworks partnership.
LEGO’s sustainability efforts extend beyond carbon capture and removal. The company is actively working to find solutions to produce its iconic bricks from more sustainable materials. In 2023, 18% of the resin purchased by LEGO was certified according to mass balance principles, translating to an estimated average of 12% renewable sources. The plan is to significantly increase this percentage in 2024 and beyond.
LEGO’s commitment to sustainability is also evident in its operations. In addition to the LEGO Climeworks partnership, the company increased its solar capacity by 16% to 15.6 MWp in 2023 and plans further expansions this year. New sites being built in Vietnam and the USA are exploring the integration of renewable energy sources that comply with both site and local government requirements.
The LEGO Climeworks partnership exemplifies the collaborative efforts required to combat climate change and pave the way for a sustainable future. As LEGO continues to inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow, its actions today send a powerful message: even the most beloved childhood icons can lead the charge in protecting the planet for generations to come.
In the light of concerns about the viability of CCS from a number of quarters and also the way it has been used in greenwashing operations, there are things that this article does not address and that I’d want to encourage journalists covering it to ask and to research. It’s good to be told the location and the broad methodology. Though the article comes over as very heavily dependent on what was probably a press release by Lego. So questions that would be good to see addressed in an article like this: if 36k tons of CO2 are to be removed p.a. … how does that compare with the company’s emissions? What is the capacity of the storage and how safe is it? How scalable is it really -can loads of companies do this, realistically? What are the costs and how does that compare with alternatives? Do Lego have a ‘beyond petroleum’ plan? What about their efforts, if any, towards addressing the issue of microplastics and plastic waste, including of their own products?