On April 16th last, ELA held its annual Conference in Stockholm. The theme of the Conference was “Lifts and Escalators in a Sustainable Future” and was opened by outgoing ELA President Jorge Ligüerre, who underlined that as a concept and as a guiding principle, sustainable development challenges our society and economy to better manage and lower any negative environmental impacts from our activities. He stated that it also presents our sector with great opportunities to play a central part in the increasing drive towards ensuring and enabling sustainability in our economy and society.
A total of seven presentations was then given during the rest of the Conference from both external experts and also ELA representatives. Bo Hallqvist from the City of Stockholm Royal Seaport provided details of a local example of how a model for sustainable urban development in Stockholm was developed. Annika Korzinek, representing the European Commission then gave a ‘big picture’ view and detailed current status of the Paris Climate Agreement, stating that in order to reduce CO2 emissions, technology solutions and regulatory measure have been driving reduced greenhouse gas emissions for industry, transport and buildings. She pointed out that more progress still needed to be made in the agricultural sector where there is still high CO2 emissions.
ELA member representatives Paula Casares, Robert Wright and Dirk De Moor then went on to present what the new approach under the EU’s Circular Economy strategy means and also how specific aspects and differing environmental methodologies relate to the Lifts Sector. Dirk De Moor provided data on recycled material content, recyclability, maintainability, repairability, extended lifetime of products. He underlined that the EU needs calculation models in order to impose measures and that these general calculation models will be available by end 2019. These have to be made specific for specific products. A first focus will be on consumer products and it is not expected that there will be any specific implementation measures for lifts for another 5 years. Ms. Birgitta Govén from the Swedish Construction Federation also provided details on requirements on sustainability in buildings that different systems such as BREAM and LEED provide.
Moving to the social dimension of sustainable development, Daniel Nyman, President of the Swedish Lift Association, tackled the issue of ‘Ageing at home’, showing how a calculation model in Sweden had been developed and its contribution to society and industry.
Closing off the Conference, Ingrid Näsström from the TEBAB, an association of industry associations in Sweden provided a wider comparison of how other industries are handling the sustainability challenge. In particular, she showed how sustainability as a concept received most interest and traction from business when win-win scenarios between the environment and economy could be developed and environmental costs to the economy were limited.
All of the presentations made at the Conference can be found here.
