UPM joins WWF's Earth Hour 2013 climate campaign

HELSINKI, March 19, 2013 (Press Release) -

UPM joins WWF's Global Earth Hour 2013 event, and will turn off the lights at its Group Head Office in Helsinki, Finland, on 23 March 2013 from 20.30 to 21.30 local time. UPM also encourages its employees worldwide to participate in the event at home. This is a symbolic action for UPM, with which the company wants to demonstrate its commitment to playing its part in mitigating climate change. This is the fifth time that UPM is joining the event.

WWF Earth Hour is an important reminder on the importance of actions to reduce energy consumption and increase the share of renewable energy. In line with UPM's Biofore strategy, the company is continuously developing its operations in order to minimize its carbon footprint and to improve its energy efficiency. UPM has set environmental targets for 2020 of which some were already tightened.

"More with Biofore is UPM way of working and our response to global resource scarcity. UPM focuses on delivering more with less, and has developed the energy efficiency of its mills already for 15 years with the help of energy saving campaigns and energy efficiency investment programmes. As a result, UPM reduced electricity consumption per ton of paper produced by 24 % during 2002-2012", says Päivi Salpakivi-Salomaa, Vice President, Environment, UPM.

81% of electricity generated by UPM is free from fossil-fuel CO2 emissions and 65% of all fuels used by UPM is based on renewable biomass. UPM continues to develop new solutions to reduce fossil CO2 emissions. UPM is investing in efficient energy generation and will build a new combined heat and power plant (CHP) at Schongau paper mill in Germany. Production of wood-based second-generation biofuel will begin in 2014 in Lappeenranta.

According to WWF, Earth Hour is the largest environmental event in the world.