Join PTC on Our Sustainability Journey

At PTC, we’re excited to participate in Earth Week with employees around the globe dedicating time and resources to raising awareness for the environment and taking action in their communities.

Through our products and practices, we’re working together to create a more sustainable world and understand that the work we do today will have an impact well into the future. That’s why we’ve been working diligently to increase the ways we help our customers design, manufacture, and service their products more sustainably, in addition to taking action to reduce our own footprint.

In this blog post, we'll share how we're progressing on our sustainability initiatives, how our solutions can help global manufacturers comply with the EU's CSRD regulation, and how you can join us on our sustainability journey.

Our goals and progress

In FY23, we set ambitious goals to reduce our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across our operations and value chain. We aligned those goals with the Science Based Target initiative and reported our baseline emissions through the Climate Disclosure Project.

Our near-term goal is to reduce our Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 50% and our Scope 3 Category 1, Purchased Goods and Services by 25% by 2030. Our long-term goal is to reach net-zero across all scope emissions by 2050, with at least 90% of absolute reductions and up to 10% of carbon removal offsets if needed.

What do these scopes mean?

Scope 1 emissions come from sources that we own or control, like building heaters and company-leased cars. Our real estate team prioritizes energy efficiency to drive down these emissions.

Scope 2 emissions come from the non-renewable electricity that we use in our offices and leased cars. To lower these emissions, we’ve signed a Virtual Power Purchase Agreement (VPPA) that will add more clean energy to the grid. By participating in a VPPA, we’re helping to finance new solar capacity that will benefit the environment and the community.

Scope 3 emissions come from everything else that we don't own or control, like purchased goods and services, waste, business travel, and employee commuting. These emissions make up about 50% of our total emissions. To reduce these, we’re collaborating with our suppliers to make environmental commitments and choosing suppliers who already offer more sustainable products. Many of our top suppliers like AWS, Microsoft, and Salesforce have aggressive decarbonization plans. Their achievements will help us reduce our Scope 3 emissions for the software and services that we buy from them.

In addition to reducing our emissions, we’re also investing in carbon removal initiatives. We funded a 6,000-tree Miyakawa forest project near our Pune, India office that will absorb about 150 metric tons of CO2 equivalent per year. We also invested in Carbon180, a non-profit organization that’s working to scale up carbon removal solutions like direct air capture to gigaton levels.

How we support our customers' sustainability initiatives

PTC software enables customers to reduce their environmental impact by transforming the ways they design, manufacture, service, and end-of-life their physical products.

Design

Decisions made in the design and engineering phase of product development are estimated to determine up to 80% of all product-related environmental impacts. Moreover, material and component supplier selections are typically the second highest footprint contributor for our customers.

PTC’s solutions allow engineers and designers to select more sustainable materials and suppliers, dematerialize their designs, and simulate performance.

Examples:

• Lightweighting designs using Creo’s generative design capabilities
• Selecting more sustainable materials using Creo’s integration with Ansys Granta MI
• Selecting more sustainable suppliers using Windchill’s integration with Makersite
• Simulating designs in Creo and Onshape to reduce the need for physical prototypes
• Tracking sustainability requirements between Codebeamer and Windchill
• Using modular design to design with material recovery and end-of-life processing in mind

Manufacturing

According to the International Energy Agency, the manufacturing sector accounts for about 20% of global energy consumption and 54% of global energy-related CO2 emissions.

PTC's manufacturing solutions enable manufacturers to drive sustainability and efficiency across their production facilities by monitoring energy use across equipment and lines, identifying and resolving quality issues, minimizing waste, and improving overall equipment effectiveness.

Examples:

• Distributed manufacturing with Windchill MPM and ThingWorx
• Monitoring and optimizing energy usage with ThingWorx Energy Management
• Identifying bottlenecks with Digital Performance Management to drive down material waste and energy use per unit manufactured
• Reducing energy and waste per part manufactured with Windchill’s aPriori integration

Service and end-of-life

Service also accounts for a significant amount of energy-related CO2 emissions, mainly due to transportation. PTC's service lifecycle management (SLM) solutions enable service providers to deliver more sustainable and efficient service outcomes. For example, extending the life and performance of assets through predictive and proactive maintenance, repair, and optimization; or reducing the CO2 impact of aftermarket service activities such as spare parts logistics, technician dispatches, and product disposal.

Examples:

• Proactive and remote service with ServiceMax to extend product life and reduce truck rolls
• Service parts optimization with Servigistics to reduce parts inventory
• Embodied carbon calculator in Servigistics to understand the impact of spare parts investment and placement
• Essential software updates to lengthen expected asset lifetimes
• Closed-loop quality and continuous improvement facilitated by the digital thread

Technology partners

Our technology partners are essential to our sustainability offerings. In 2023, we expanded our partnerships with Ansys and aPriori to enhance material footprint tracking capabilities in Windchill and Creo. In 2024, we plan to improve these capabilities within Windchill and Creo so that material and supplier footprint calculations can be integrated into a product's bill of materials (BOM).

Key partnerships:

• Ansys Granta: Material selection for CAD designs
• aPriori: Manufacturability simulation of CAD designs
• Makersite: Supplier selection and BOM footprint analysis

How PTC can help customers comply with CSRD

The EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) is a new regulation that aims to drive more sustainable business practices at companies that operate in, and export to, the EU. CSRD builds on previous legislation with more stringent requirements that will affect more companies. It will be phased in from 2024-2028, with companies in the EU going first, followed by exporters to the EU.

PTC can help customers comply with CSRD by providing them with the tools and data they need to measure, report, and improve their product footprints. PTC's software can help customers:

• Track and optimize material and supplier selections for their products.
• Reduce material usage and weight with generative design and simulation.
• Improve energy efficiency and reduce waste for manufacturing and service processes.
• Extend product lifetimes and enable circular economy practices.
• Integrate sustainability data into their digital thread and bill of materials.
• Collaborate with partners and stakeholders on sustainability goals and initiatives.

Additional sustainability initiatives

At PTC, we’re always looking for ways to advance our sustainability agenda and share best practices with employees, customers, and partners. Some of the initiatives we recently launched or participated in include:

• FY23 Impact Report: In December 2023, we released our inaugural Impact Report. Every fiscal year, we release this report to showcase PTC's ESG initiatives, goals, and progress. This report is a great resource for anyone who wants to learn more about PTC's ESG program.
• Sustainability Tour: Over the last three months, we’ve enabled hundreds of employees, customers, and partners on the EU's CSRD and design for sustainability principles.
• Green at PTC: Green at PTC is PTC's sustainability-focused global ambassador group. As a 100% employee-led volunteer effort, Green at PTC aims to be the voice of employees for sustainability at PTC and advocates for change within the company.

Join PTC in celebrating Earth Day

As we celebrate Earth Day at PTC, we invite you to join us in protecting our planet and creating a more sustainable future. Whether it's by using PTC software to design, manufacture, or service your products more sustainably, by reducing your own environmental footprint, or by supporting environmental causes and organizations, every action counts. Together, we can make a positive difference for our planet and our communities.