BurdaDruck's German printing plants use their own highly efficient combined heat and power (CHP) plants to generate electrical energy and heat simultaneously. The waste heat emitted during the production of electrical energy is used to create the high-pressure steam required for the printing process. The result is efficiency of about 90%, which is almost twice as high as in conventional power plants. Part of the waste heat is also fed into the district heating network in the town of Offenburg. At present, however, natural gas is the only possible primary fuel for this type of energy generation in Burda's printing plants.
The use of renewable energies such as biomethane and green hydrogen is still not viable due to supply shortages and delivery bottlenecks; however, this option is being examined, with steady progress being made. The electricity purchased from third parties is partly generated using 100% renewable energy sources (green electricity).
In future, the company will itself generate the electricity it needs to power its locations – through a seamless increase in regional, renewable energies such as photovoltaic and wind power. To this end, the "getting better" team is working very closely with BurdaDruck and other project partners. Individual Hubert Burda Media holdings, such as Cyberport, have been using photovoltaic systems successfully for several years.