"The potential for energy efficiency is great"

Meet Annika, Head of sustainability at Inwido, about the new role.

Welcome to Inwido Annika Hansson. This week you start the new role as Head of sustainability development. What will you be working on?
“I will work on developing, leading, planning and following up on Inwido's sustainability work and reporting. Then I look forward to collaborating with our Business units to help them develop the sustainability work in their own organizations. Then I will strengthen and develop Inwido's sustainability strategy together with my manager Lena Wessner and the rest of the group management.”

What have you done before?
“My first 10 years I worked with various energy and environmental issues connected to house construction. After that, I have worked with sustainability issues at NCC in various staff roles with sustainability controlling, reporting, creation of KPIs, strategy work and more.”

What got you interested in sustainability?
“The environmental issues have always been there! The interest comes from growing up in Österlen, where you live close to "everything beautiful" and pollution, the lack of biological diversity and waste of resources becomes so visible. It then became natural to take an M.sc. in environmental engineering at LTH. Sustainability is fun to work with and I like the complexity of the issue with the fact that ambitions to constantly reduce their impact exist while companies want to develop their operations and have a good economy. It is important to dare and be able to prioritize among what the business has at its disposal, work effectively with this, and set demands on suppliers and partners. Collaborations, conversations, and support in science are central to success.

 

What potential do you see in energy efficiency improvements, which are now such a hot issue?
"The potential is great! Politics is of great importance in putting our behaviors in the right direction and I think it would be good to have clear incentives to reduce energy consumption. At Inwido, I am very much looking forward to getting to know the entire organization and being part of spreading good examples and ideas as well as supporting the business and at the same time pushing the sustainability work forward. We have sustainability goals in energy use and here we must make sure that the numbers are constantly moving in the right direction. The fact that our products then mean that buildings have a lower energy consumption and thereby help society reduce its energy needs is very positive.

When you're not working. What do you come up with then?
"I have a family and quite young children, 4 and 9 years old, so everyday life consists of family life and the children's activities, but when I get to decide the family's weekend, we pack lunch and coffee and spend a sunny day in the forest and explore the environment and new types of mushrooms."