Forest products company Stora Enso announced today a significant acceleration of its sustainability ambitions, with a new overall goal to become a net positive contributor, where the company removes more CO2 from the atmosphere than it emits, its products are recycled, and it enhances biodiversity.

Today’s announcement included a series of new sustainability goals, including targets to offer 100% regenerative products and solutions by 2050, and to reduce Scope 1 and 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 50% by 2030, from a 2019 base-year.

The company stated that its 2030 carbon reduction targets include reducing emissions from direct fossil CO2 emissions from production, indirect CO2 emissions related to purchased electricity and heat, aligned with the 1.5-degree scenario, as well as and emissions from other sources across its value chain. According to Stora Enso, the targets have been approved by the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi).

Annica Bresky, Stora Enso’s President and CEO, said:

“As a renewable materials company, our core business is about offering solutions to sustainability challenges. To balance staying within planetary boundaries and securing economic and social progress, the world needs a transformation away from fossil dependency and a linear economy. With this commitment Stora Enso aims to be a leading actor in driving the transformation towards a biobased circular economy. We will be transparent with our progress, taking a science-based approach, to offer regenerative solutions that not only mitigate environmental impact, but restore and rebuild,”

As part of its new ambition, the company also committed to achieving a net-positive impact on biodiversity in its own forests and plantations by 2050 through active biodiversity management. A set of actions towards 2030 has been developed and initiated to improve biodiversity on the species, habitat and landscape levels.

Jari Suominen, Executive Vice President, Forest Division at Stora Enso, said:

“Stora Enso uses its own forest in Sweden as a development platform for enhancing biodiversity. We will, for example, increase the share of broad-leaved trees and the amount of dead wood. Continuous cover forestry will be tested to evaluate its impact on biodiversity and forest growth in areas suitable for this method. Furthermore, Stora Enso will unify and expand performance evaluations that assess the quality of our work in Finland, Sweden, Russia and the Baltics in order to enhance biodiversity.”