Upon the publication of Viessmann’s 2023 Sustainability Report, we asked Andreas Wade, Head of Sustainability and Jahanzeb Tariq Global Manager Sustainable Products and Circularity to tell us more about their roles at company and Viessmann’s motivation for joining the CE-RISE project. Both Andreas and Jahanzeb are highly involved in the project activities and will also help us better understand circularity in heat-pumps in an upcoming series on the website.
Get to know the Team working on CE-RISE
Let me introduce myself, I’m Andreas Wade, Head of Sustainability at Viessmann since September 2021. I focus on the implementation and evolution of the company’s sustainability strategy towards decarbonisation of heating and cooling, circularity and product stewardship as well as sector coupling at all scales to achieve a just transformation.
Over the past 15 years in the photovoltaic industry, I worked on enabling a global sustainability framework as Global Sustainability Director for First Solar, president of PVthin and long-standing chair of the sustainability workstream of SolarPower Europe.
Leading the industry through the Product Environmental Footprint pilot phase, I helped establishing the industry’s first sustainability leadership standard. Prior to the photovoltaic industry, I made my first forays into the energy sector with Shell Exploration and Production in the UK and the Netherlands, where I worked on energy efficiency improvements, emissions reductions and carbon mitigation. I began my professional career with UNESCO as an Associate Expert on Recycling in the cluster office for the GCC in Doha, Qatar after having completed my Master of Engineering degree from the Clausthal University of Technology, Germany.
My name is Jahanzeb Tariq, and I work at Viessmann Climate Solutions as Global Manager Sustainable Products and Circularity. My role broadens over a large horizon covering Life Cycle Assessment of products (energy transition technologies), circular product design, circular business models and developing sector coupled solution-based business models to optimize for sustainability criteria.
Prior to joining Viessmann, I had been involved in topics of hybrid Solar PV systems’ design and planning, grid integration, green Hydrogen production and long-term energy planning.
I have a Masters in Energy and Environmental Management and have Bachelors degree in Engineering Sciences. I am quite passionate about developing the sector coupled with energy solutions that provide a sustainable transition from conventional power generation methods. I am very curious to combine digital services with the products/systems to make them more economical and less carbon intensive. This is the baseline of my motivation to work in the sustainability team at Viessmann.
More about Viessmann
Viessmann is a family business with more than 100 years of experience, that takes a multi-generational approach to value creation. The purpose of the company is to “create living spaces for generations to come”. Viessmann has a strong global presence, with manufacturing facilities, subsidiaries, and sales offices in numerous countries around the world. This global reach allows us to serve customers in various markets and regions.
Founded in 1917, the company has grown to become a global leader in the heating and cooling technology industry. Viessmann’s core business is the development and production of energy-efficient heating, cooling, and ventilation systems for residential, commercial, and industrial applications. It has recently expanded into providing energy transition technologies as climate solutions in its product folio, encompassing Solar PV, EV chargers, and stationary energy storage solutions. In addition, Viessmann provides services from advisory and training its customers to third party-ownership business options, and digital services such as energy monitoring apps, green electricity contracts, smart energy management etc.
Viessmann is working primarily on providing industry related problems regarding circularity principles on product value chains; heat pumps, solar PV, LFP batteries. In addition, it provides feedback and insights to adapt the block-chain based information system to real life examples of products’ lifecycles.
Viessmann’s role in the project
Viessmann’s involvement in the project is driven from motivations to learn and grow with the peers of the consortium on topics of circularity and to develop solutions for existing barriers through cocreation. In addition, through the consortium Viessmann would be able to close knowledge gaps on end-of-life treatment of its products and essentially develop methods on how to close product specific value chains.
My role (Jahanzeb) in the project is to co-ordinate the company’s involvement and look over the core topics and concepts from Viessmann’s products perspective – assisting the consortium to gain real life insights of challenges and opportunities to develop circular business models with the stakeholders involved at each life cycle.
My motivation stems from the possibility of solving core problems of the industry through collaboration. Our project work can help find ways to decouple industrialization from resource extraction – which is a huge challenge foreseen for energy transition technologies. Circular business models development and implementation can help to reduce this foreseen impact.
My role (Andreas) in the project is to link the leading-edge research the consortium is working on, with the demand and requirements of the industry sector Viessmann is representing. My motivation – having been a life cycle assessment enthusiast and practitioner for the last 20 years – is to help shape the electron & molecule block chain for products and services, as one of the most important enablers for true extended producer responsibility and accountability and hence the transformation of business models towards future-fit, sustainable patterns in line with earth system boundaries and the sustainable development goals for humanity. For me, success would look like this (this story is taken from the Sustainability Report):
What would success look like? The year is 2030. A house owner in Slovenia applies for a loan, via an installation partner, to renovate and replace their heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) and photovoltaic system. The bank representative accesses the digital product passports by scanning the data matrix code on the equipment plating of the replacement products. Using this system, they can identify where and under what conditions the components of the HVAC system were manufactured. This includes the environmental and social impact data of the product, industry, country-of-origin, material and production specifics. The bank representative explores the data, jumping from tier to tier in the supply chain. She looks at information about a quartzite mine in India, where the key account manager for a silicon supplier in South Korea originally provided data on the quartzite batch shipped to the polysilicon plant. This includes information on the wage level, social and health insurance of the workers, environmental permits, energy used to mine and process, waste generated, water used, shipment distances, and more. Through to the ingot (Taiwan), wafer (Taiwan), silicon chip (Taiwan), printed circuit board (China), electronics integrator (Vietnam), pump control unit (Vietnam), and pump manufacturer (Turkey), each key account manager added data to the blockchain until the pump batch arrived at the Viessmann heat pump assembly plant in Legnica (Poland). Filling the final data before putting the product on the market and selling it to the installation partner in Ljubljana (Slovenia), the Viessmann key account manager added repairability, disassembly and secondary raw materials information, as well as the production and social parameters to complete the digital product passport. As the bank representative reviews the information, the AI driven algorithm cross-checks the data with latest business intelligence and media reports on human rights and environmental violations. All potential risk indicators are green, and the reviewer notes, therefore, that the data provided conforms with the EU taxonomy and is compliant with the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. This whole process takes just one minute. The bank agrees to the loan and the house owner gets a 3% lower interest rate, as the loan can directly be attributed to the bank’s green finance portfolio, which is in high demand from institutional investors.