Sustainability and the reduction of our CO₂ footprint are central concerns of Planttech Engineering GmbH in Selm. Through targeted measures and investments, we strive to continuously make our business processes more environmentally friendly. Our goal is to use innovative technologies to minimize our carbon footprint and have a positive impact on the environment.

An important component of our sustainability strategy is the 258 kWp solar power plant that we operate on the roofs of our headquarters in Selm/NRW. By using solar energy, we can cover a large part of our electricity needs directly and without detours from renewable sources and thus significantly reduce the use of fossil fuels. This makes a significant contribution to reducing our CO₂ emissions, although we have been using only green electricity for several years.

Our solar power plant went into operation in April 2023 and we expect to be able to cover a relevant part of our electricity requirements at our headquarters.

In order to store excess solar energy and also use it outside of the hours of sunshine, we have a storage battery with a total capacity of 207 kWh spread over five halls. This enables us to have a flexible and sustainable energy supply, even when the sun is not shining or we need more energy than is currently being generated. For example, starting work at 6 a.m. in the winter months.

In addition, we have additional battery storage with a capacity of 154 kWh as a V2H/G system. Our electric vehicles can be used as mobile energy stores (bidirectional charging) and, if necessary, supply electricity back to the grid (V2G - Vehicle to Grid) or to our company buildings and halls (V2H - Vehicle to Home).

This innovative approach maximizes the efficiency of our solar power plant and energy supply and helps us to further reduce our carbon footprint. In addition, fully charged vehicles for zero-emission mobility are always available at our company headquarters in Selm.

In order to use our car fleet with as few emissions as possible, we consistently rely on purely electric vehicles. We currently have five electric vehicles that are used in our company. We have also installed eight charging points on our company premises to ensure a convenient and environmentally friendly charging option for our own e-vehicles and those of our employees and customers. By using electromobility, we not only reduce our direct CO₂ emissions, but also contribute to reducing noise and fine dust emissions from public road traffic.

In addition, we have integrated air/heat pumps with air conditioning into our corporate infrastructure and replaced the existing gas boilers with air heat pumps with SG-Ready Technology and connection to the energy management system. This technology allows us to regulate the room temperature in our buildings in an environmentally friendly way.

The air/heat pumps use the ambient air as an energy source and reduce the use of our existing, conventional heating and cooling systems, which are dependent on fossil fuels and electricity. This enables us to reduce our energy consumption and further minimize our CO₂ emissions.

We are not just at the beginning, but have been generating electricity and heat using a fuel cell for several years and have thus achieved a production capacity of over 13,000 kWh/year and 5,256 kW/year of usable heat output. In addition, we converted all office, workshop and outdoor lighting to LED technology very early on.

We are very curious to see how our CO₂ footprint will continue to be reduced and are observing, measuring and documenting the development very closely in order to adapt and optimize our strategy at any time.