“We are seeing a constant stream of new proposals and ideas from the legislator and new regulations are being issued. However, we have been developing our own environmental protection measures for many years and have already made significant progress in terms of protecting the environment, saving energy and, of course, costs,” says Jürgen Abele, Division Manager for Industrial Services and Construction. One area of focus is heat supply, which is not only about ensuring pleasant temperatures in office buildings and production halls: “We are developing concepts that optimise the way we generate and use heat, among other things,” he explains. Abele and his department are therefore in charge of a versatile heating system: the heat is generated using geothermal and solar thermal energy, for example, or recovered by heat pumps and heat recovery equipment installed in the compressed air and exhaust air systems. The conventional natural-gas-fuelled radiant heaters and burners are operated via temperature or cascade controls, which can limit their consumption and thus lower the demand on the natural gas grid. “The key factor is reducing heat demand,” adds Energy Engineer Sophie Gantert: “The production buildings have therefore been continuously renovated over the years and the roofs and façades have been insulated.” This improvement of the building shell is not only noticeable in the heating season due to reduced energy consumption. The temperatures are also lower in the summer, making the working environment in the renovated halls more pleasant. Heat loss and draughts are counteracted through simultaneous operation of interlocking door groups and the existing airlock systems.

“We can use it to control every building in our plant,” explains Christian Wölfle from the Industrial Service Electrics department as he shows us an overview of flashing bars and numbers on his computer. “Via a central program, we can control, for example, lighting, heating, skylights, compressors, compressed-air or exhaust systems, and even the medical refrigerators used by our medical service. We can track the energy consumption of the buildings down to the individual machines with a connected load of more than 20 kilowatts. To work out how much energy we can save, we need to know our actual consumption.” More than 20 years ago, his supervisor Jürgen Abele began working on the building control system in the final assembly area. Among other things, it enables all compressed air consumption to be switched off centrally outside working hours to reduce losses. Once identified, potential for improvement is exploited using the latest technology and control systems, which were developed in-house. More than half of the lighting has already been converted to dimmable LED technology – and the trend is rising. “We can reduce our energy consumption by a further 30 per cent with the LED lighting by using a daylight-dependent control system, which we also developed in-house. Our team creates every control system, be it for lighting, heating, skylights and other applications, to suit the needs of the site and their colleagues,” Wölfle tells us proudly.

“When we talk about the energy transition, we think of it holistically,” says Dr Ulrich Hamme, Managing Director Design and Development. “Logically, this also includes our products.” For almost two years now, we have been fuelling our cranes in Ehingen exclusively with pure HVO – a synthetic fuel that is largely carbon neutral and consists mainly of vegetable oil waste – for acceptance, test runs and for delivery. With regard to our products, HVO has the further advantage that there is no need to develop new machines or replace or upgrade the existing ones. You can continue working with HVO immediately.

“At Liebherr, our approach is to remain open to all types of technology. For our drive technologies, this means that they are adapted to the machine and the general conditions at the place of use,” says Dr Hamme. Therefore, besides HVO, there are still diesel vehicles as well as battery drives and e-fuels on the market. Being open to technology also means accepting that electrification does not always make sense and is not always possible. For example, construction sites in remote, inaccessible locations do not always have a reliable charging infrastructure. “When erecting wind turbines, the supporting infrastructure and power supply are first created using mobile and crawler cranes. Nevertheless, these energy-intensive machines must work reliably. In addition, in terms of the power source you need a different basic vehicle for electricity than for HVO, which means converting the vehicles for every job is not technically possible.”