Danish toy giant Lego has set its sights towards an ambitious renewable energy target after exceeding its energy efficiency plans for 2016.
In 2013 the company set out to increase its energy efficiency by 10% by 2016. After a dismal start – achieving just a 0.3% improvement in energy efficiency in 2014 – Lego ramped up its efforts and recorded efficiency improvements of 5.7% and 5.5% in 2015 and 2016 respectively.
The combined total of 11.5% takes Lego beyond its interim target and John Goodwin, executive vice president and chief financial officer at Lego, said the group was “very pleased” to have exceeded its targets on this front.
Lego is now turning its sights towards meeting a secondary target; for all energy consumption at the company to be “balanced” by renewables by 2020.
To this end the group has made a major investment in the Burbo Bank offshore wind farm, which is currently under construction off the coast of the UK.
The investment has been made through a partnership involving Lego’s parent company Kirkbi A/S, Dong Energy and Danish pension fund PKA.
Burbo Bank originally began generating power in July 2007 with a nameplate capacity of 90MW, however an extension was mooted by Dong Energy which eventually led to the project securing a Contracts for Difference agreement to add more than 250MW to the site’s capacity.
This resulted in Kirkbi and PKA purchasing half of the wind farm for a fee of £660 million earlier this year.
The Burbo extension is however not Lego’s sole investment in renewable power. Last year the company celebrated the opening of the Borkum Riffgrund 1 wind farm, a 312MW development off the coast of the Netherlands, of which the Lego Group owns 31.5%.
“For the Lego Group, investing in an ambitious responsibility agenda is an ongoing and integral part of our company – to continue to improve how we run our business in relation to our environmental impact.
“In that process, we focus on a broad range of efforts, with energy efficiency and investments in renewable energy being one cornerstone. Another is our search for sustainable materials, on which we will continue our dedicated work in the coming years,” Goodwin said.