To govern the identified risk and negative value chain impact from using virgin materials, we have adopted a ‘Resource management policy’, covering all of our activities and locations. The policy’s objective is to ensure that we minimise the use and depletion of virgin resources by developing circular value chains together with our suppliers, where feasible, and guide our efforts on sustainable sourcing. It further addresses our adherence to the waste hierarchy, prioritising waste avoidance by reducing and reusing before recycling.

As part of our DMA, we frequently screen our assets and activities to understand their impacts, risks, and opportunities across our value chain. However, as also noted in the DMA methodology and due to the nature of our assets, we have not undertaken direct consultations with affected communities as part of the screening performed to understand our IROs related to resource use and circularity. Going forward, we will increasingly apply our methodology for life cycle assessments (LCAs), providing enhanced insights into our impacts related to the use and depletion of virgin materials when constructing our assets. Furthermore, we have calculated the recyclability rate of materials embedded in a representative sample of our offshore wind farms, to understand which materials and components we can process for recycling upon retirement of the wind farms. The underlying calculations, prepared in collaboration with the digital ReWind tool facilitated by DNV, are important for our further understanding of the negative impact of materials wasted during construction, operation, and decommissioning. Additionally, the information gathered helps us identify how we can turn used materials, such as steel and copper, into reusable components, improving our wider resource efficiency.