At the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting in South Africa the “Durban platform for enhanced action” was announced. A roadmap towards a legal framework for a successor of the Kyoto Protocol is to be developed by 2015. As CO2 reduction is of major global concern it is not surprising that we are often asked what our own industry’s intentions for a low carbon future are.

The corrugated industry has been a pioneer in the LCA (Life Cycle Analysis) landscape and for many years it has been accumulating data.Thanks to continuous improvements in transport, energy use, production fuels, raw material production and direct emissions we were able to report last year that our total CO2 emissions between the years 2006 and 2009 had declined by 11.7 %.

Moreover at the CEPI  Annual  Meeting held during European Paper Week in November The forest fibre industry announced a target for a carbon dioxide emission reduction of 80% by the year 2050.

This new industry target is detailed in The Forest Fibre Industry 2050 Roadmap which mirrors the European Commission’s own Roadmap launched in March 2011 working towards a low-carbon bio-economy.

2050 may seem a long way off but it is in fact just two investment cycles away – the lives of two paper machines.