Anchoring sustainability through shared responsibilities

Although passionate staff are involved throughout the organization, in general Techem’s approach to sustainability is built on three primary pillars: 

• Techem Research Institute on Sustainability (TRIOS): Carries principal responsibility for developing and implementing sustainability initiatives, collecting data, and monitoring and reporting results.

• Finance: Ensures compliance with regulatory, investor, and capital market requirements, as well as ensuring the quality of all necessary documentation.

• Human Resources, Legal and Claims: Oversees implementation of employee  policies, including collecting and analysing relevant data. 

Techem also takes care to conduct robust assessments of the materiality of its efforts. This process comprises identifying impact, opportunities, and risks, conducting interviews with external stakeholders, collecting assessments from internal stakeholders, and validating and implementing the results.

Fields of action and Sustainability Program

The content of our Sustainability Report is based on the ESG criteria: Environmental, Social, Governance. 

At Techem, we have bundled our sustainability activities along these criteria into three main areas:

Sphere of impact

We also understand that our sustainability efforts have implications well beyond our walls, and as we set our programs in place, we remain aware of three crucial spheres of impact.

The climate and the environment

Our products and services improve the energy efficiency of buildings equipped with Techem’s digital solutions, helping them abate CO₂e emissions and transition to renewable energy sources. We have also implemented programs in our own operations to conserve resources and lower emissions. Together, these efforts support the goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2045.

The individual and the community

Our commitment encompasses the individual, our employees, who receive the best training and development opportunities, and includes creating mentally and physically safe working environments, including the enrichment brought by diverse workplaces. More broadly, we work with our clients to ensure they are satisfied with our solutions, as well as striving to develop innovations that contribute to our local and global communities.

Ethical business conduct

A modern, value-oriented corporate culture is essential to our commitment to sustainability and an ethical environment. Among the components of our focus on long-term value creation are fair competition, a transparent pricing policy, ethical behaviour, and sustainability all along our supply chain.

Techem Research Institute on Sustainability (TRIOS)

The Techem Research Institute on Sustainability (TRIOS) is our flagship effort for research and analysis of topics relevant to sustainability across the group’s offices in 18 countries.

TRIOS was founded in 2022 to help us advance our efforts toward increased energy efficiency and reduced CO₂e emissions. Through collaborative efforts and analysis, we will contribute to creating a low-emission society with a stable and affordable supply of energy and other resources.

Driving decarbonization

TRIOS research focuses largely on using renewable energy supplies, increasing the energy efficiency of our processes, and reducing CO₂e emissions. The results also help lower the carbon footprints of the building stock equipped with our solutions.

Through our research we have created a rich database that allows us to not only calculate the CO₂e footprint of the Techem Group, but also to determine the consumption patterns and CO₂e characteristics in our clients’ buildings. The institute also standardizes our device technologies and billing bases, handles patent management, and takes the lead in discussions and partnerships with social stakeholders, scientific institutions, and other relevant organizations.

This multi-pronged approach has strengthened the environmental dimension across our organization.

Consumption Figures Study

A hallmark of the scientific contributions from TRIOS is the Consumption Figures Study, which we publish regularly. The study is based on data – sanitized to protect privacy – on energy and water consumption and related costs from more than a million apartments in Germany in more than 100,000 apartment buildings.

The overall analysis shows that a large portion of these properties are well behind in their energy-efficiency efforts. For many, this is an artifact of aging systems: about a third of the buildings in our sample have inefficient systems that are more than 25 years old. This finding alone represents tremendous potential for upgrading systems to be more energy efficient. For example, modern automated heating systems are crucial to abating emissions within the real estate sector.

The Techem Consumption Figures Study 2022 drew data from about 1.4 million homes in about 120.000 apartment buildings in Germany. While our study focuses on apartments, its findings can also inform discussions around detached and semi-detached homes, whether rented or owned by the resident.

Overall, based on the reasonable assumption that digital solutions and modified behaviour can increase energy efficiency in housing by 15 percent, our analysis suggests a potential for abating almost two tonnes of CO₂e emissions annually just in Germany from a concerted effort. Other core findings from the 2022 study are as followed.