Dr. Peter Jahns from Effizienz Agentur NRW presented “Circular business model” at the “New Technology Forum” at Hall 16, Booth F11 on the 21-09-2023.
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Thank you very much and thank you for the invitation actually the ministry of the environment was asked to give a presentation here and they approached us in order to give a presentation and a lecture here at the trade Shore in Hanover I’m also an engineer my
So now I’m um stepping in for the ministry of the environment and in order to no I was also looking forward to come here and to also take a look at what’s going on in terms of green production in terms of metal working Machining and climate neutral industry I wanted to
Learn about the new developments now first I would like to give you a brief overview of the effici agencies so that you know where I’m coming from for more than 20 years the efficiency agency Norther and West failure has been commissioned by the ministry of environment to supportes in terms of green production
Sustainability and resource efficiency in northb West faia we have 10,000 industrial companies and beyond that we have 18,000 um hand handicraft Focus companies and they are they are using primary and secondary resources they can decide what they want to use they can decide whether they can repair the products or whether
They want to use renewable energies of course not all the 10,000 companies have the responsibility to design their own uh products a few larger companies take the decisions on the design of products however it needs to be clarified with those large players how to live Innovations how to promote Innovations
Along the entire added value chain in order to promote Innovations which is necessary for Energy Efficiency we are organizing trainings and lectures we have about 200 300 companies joining us there and then we also focus on implementation and execution because at our agency it is not just enough to show
What’s possible as potential but we also want to show them how to do things so funding and financing is often of the essence because in times of increasing interest rates the risk assessment is also very important also with regard to the EU taxonomy you have to have the right business
Plan and this needs to yeah be included for for every company so what are we doing as energy efficient efficiency agency the initiatives and projects of the federal government in terms of Energy Efficiency are promoted by us we reach about 1,000 people per year those are 500 to 700 companies we are training
Each in every year and we have about 250 projects with which we are able to reduce 30,000 tons of material per year and 45,000 tons of CO2 emissions and this is possible because we are actually seeing a stronger focus on Energy Efficiency and resource conservation and this results in
Investment of 180 million EUR per year this is a very strong signal and that is why we also need a lot of support of what’s going on locally we want to change things in Germany we don’t only want to consume here but we also want to produce the
Products here most of the time the products come from abroad and we don’t want to just give them back in order to have the recycling take place there and over here you can see the development of the past few years and this is important because many companies which are also
Represented here are dealing with the topic of green production they only focus on their production and they want their production to become environmental friendly and climate neutral however it’s about much more we need to have environmentally friendly product design and ecodesign and this is what we have started quite early we started talking
To procurement so we wanted to get the creatives and the environmental Specialists on board so the procurement Department also needs to know that it’s not just enough to buy cheaper products because they often have a higher uh higher CO2 footprint and it’s also important to talk to Distributors and to the trade
System because we also need sustainable product design this needs to be further developed also alongside the use of the product for more than 5 years we have the round table circular economy in northb West failure and different institutions and organizations are participating we have the inen Institute the competent Network environmental
Economy The frof Institute the Technology Center the cscp metabolon the wal Institute later we will also hear or get an input from the wal Institute and we also have the University of applied sciences the society and companies represented here and we have a large exchange of information and people also develop
Strategies in order to see how North West faia where 25% of the economic output comes from how we can involve suppliers and consumers in order to achieve the circular economy on the right hand side you can see a picture of the stakeholders and just recently we celebrated the fifth
Anniversary of this network of this round table and what’s special is that the minister of the economics and the minister of the environment both celebrated this anniversary this is a cooperation between those two Ministries in the previous presentation it became also clear that it’s important to not just focus on the circular
Economy and our minister of the environment calls it the waste Focus circular economy but it’s also important to think about the post consumption so during the design phase we already have to think about what’s going to happen with the products after the end of life and this is what the Institute of vatal
Does and this also needs to be communicated to the companies and to the managers they shouldn’t only be thinking about what’s going to happen with their product after consumption they already have to design the product in such a way so that it can be reused or refurbished or
Remanufactured there should be a reuse or recycling of the the product shouldn’t just be waste this is an important approach and this is what we tell the companies we tell them that there are three different strategies narrow less material and less energy or second approach is slow you
Use the products for a longer period of time make them usable for a longer period of time or make modular products and then we also have the third strategy which is clothes where you reuse and recycle materials so the designer and the marketing department can already work on that so it’s not
Just the technical experts and engineers and technicians in the shop Flur shop Flor having to deal with that it’s up to all of us also the designers and the people marketing the problem uh the products have to think about the circular economy we have to enable our to remanufacture or refurbish the
Products we’ve already mentioned that the new green deer strategy of the EU is so important 50% of CO2 emissions can only be achieved this is something we should note here if the circular economy um is implemented because we have different value streams we have different usage Concepts we cannot achieve climate neutrality through
Renewable energy or Energy Efficiency alone 50% is the energy transition and 50% is the resource transition and you already mentioned it the resource transition can only be achieved in order to um by thinking in circuits and that is why you also renamed your Association and this will result in different
Business models so the business models come from the so-called R strategy we always say it’s um 10 strategies actually it’s 11 strategies you can take a look at them later but you also see the three overwatching strategies narrow slow and close so very important is narrow with
Rethinking and reduse we should have a low input of materials here then slow is repairing refurbishing but I think the most decisive part is narrow here and the last strategy would be close so our focus is on the R1 to R6 strategies because we have the um widest fields of applications with the
Companies’s here here in order to achieve improvements on the left hand side you can see the linear economic system so we start with the resource extraction the materials are of low value you extract the material you process the material you put energy into the materials you put technology into
The materials and you put your your brain into the materials so the materials become much more valuable until they are being sold to the consumers so this is the the tip this is the highest price level and then we use the materials and as soon as we don’t
Want to use them any longer they don’t have any value and then they will be waste so they will be part of the waste regime so after the usage phase you can see the loss of value so we go down to zero here here and the bde has great examples um showing that
They can actually minus values here that you have to pay something for disposing of waste and this of course leads to the increase of the GDP but from an economical and environmental point of view this doesn’t make sense it makes much more sense to have a circular
Economy so during the use of um product through repairs and modular design you can keep the products in the loop so through reusing and refurbishing you can make sure to keep the product in the circular econom economy and this is our task and this is also the task of
Other institutions in other states by the virtu low sex and so on so forth with the support of the the ministry of the environment we need to train the companies and raise awareness this is also done by other institutions however we also see that every company every entrepreneur needs a
Recipe in order to really deal with this concept because the generous strategies are quite clear however the implementation the execution is rather difficult we also see that we need to do a lot of Consulting a lot of support so that people really understand how they can also support their consumers and their
Clients and that is why we focus on circular design products and business models alike should be designed in a circular way so we do not only talk to the product designers and manufacturers but we also talk to the SES reps to the managers and to the marketing people
Because you also have to come up with circular business models and the link between those two the production the design on the one hand and then the sales and marketing and management on the other hand this is something that needs to be supported by the
Consultant so if you now take a look at this slide you will also see that you will also able to see that on the previous slides we have to use uh work with all the stakeholders in the added value chain so that the product the end of use product is not
Going to the waste regime but it’s actually going back to the circle so you can actually make use of this economic cycle so we don’t only have to talk to the production managers we also need to talk to the SES reps we have to raise awareness among them and we also need to
Talk to the Distributors and retailers they also have to be willing to sell this used product in the market so it is also the task of the uh state government to raise awareness among the consumers as well through the consumption protection agencies for instance so the consumers also have to
Accept these new products these used products most of the people don’t really understand these new products there are still prejudices and obstacles we see already some changes in the clothing sector and also in terms of used vehicles but in all the other segments people actually want to have
New products I would like to mention one example that we developed together with the company utk it is a medical devices manufacturer this is some kind of pistol it’s a suction and rinsing system which is used when you have to treat wounds and you have a pump inside with electrolyte
Solution so you rinse the wound and then it’s sucked back and in the past the entire pistol including the battery the motor the accumulator everything was thrown away it was just thrown to the waist bin and it was not recycled nothing and utk solution from luden shine maybe you know
Luden shine came up with a New Concept so after the surgery this pistol can be opened and then with this um blue uh part you can take out the motor and then you can collect the motor and this is actually the most important uh part because it also consists of
Stainless steel and rare earth you can clean it and it can be reused up to 150 Parts uh times and the other parts the plastic parts will go to the way of course um with other parts stainless steel you could also think about recycling but it’s not really worth it
In our society so maybe you shouldn’t just use plastic here but M stain steel now these are the approaches that are available for consultancy project and the different state governments but also the sectoral associations offer exactly that first of all what you want to do is to reduce your resource
Consumption by the parameters you see here then you want to increase your product benefits so how can you increase the intrinsic value of a product uh like the its lifetime it’s application if you think about sustainability and then finally once you’ve done that maybe you can then reuse and recycle your
Materials and make it much better the material and also the chemical recycling is something that should be much upgraded but the different strategies and different approaches there and I think Germany is a society at large but also Europe needs to develop a common set of Standards to make sure that we’re
Working not only you know in one single Market but in a common European integrated market and even Europe is too small when you come to think of it maybe you want to develop strategies for our global economy because products produced in China also used in this part of the
World now how do you recycle those how do you dispose of those if they’re plastic materials in the uh in the product with heavy metals but they still uh circulating on the European market although they would not be allowed to be circulated you would need to drill down
The supply chain and see to change over the production say in China you can so that we can recycle it better here in Europe there also some initiatives of the universities the Prosper college is um in the western R Valley area and for four years they’ve been working on the
Circular economy and they’re currently in investigating the need for transformation for making the circular economy a reality across the board the efficiency agency of North R West failure um um has just set off some of that research with its 30 employees and they are doing this scientifically or academically interesting questionnaires
Tools they’ve developed real labs to bring about results all of that has been supported by the ministry of economic Affairs and climate action and that is a project that comes to its end this year so um just have a look in the internet find out what POS
Colleague has been doing or maybe come to the closing event to botr later this year and here’s my last slide we have also contacted our Dutch colleagues five or six years ago with the Technical University at Del back in 2016 they have worked on an initiative by
The by the Dutch Ministry of the environment they are training um companies and designers on all matters related to Circular economy and the circular design 5 and a half days you see that and uh both companies and designers undergo that training course we’re doing the same now in North R West
Failure um applied it to our specificities to distinguish between the renish and the West failan um businesses but also that was done in an effort to raise awareness on circular on the circular economy we are doing this also in the coming years in partnership with the ministry of economic Affairs we want
To reach out to about 20% of our businesses in the state in the next couple of years in order to bring about this change in our federal state would be great if that could be done in other parts of Germany as well but Professor sches you were right when you said that
North R West failure has been a Pioneer in this and ideally in b berenberg or Bavaria other initiatives should be uh um should be uh modeling what we’ve been doing as well because those initiatives I believe are worthwhile to trigger rapid change in the market so I’d like
To thank you for your attention and later on when we have our panel discussion I’ll be happy to answer your questions thank you very Much