ABB’s Executive on Circularity’s Missing Link: Product Design

The energy sector’s push toward circularity often gets stuck at the repair-and-recycle stage, but the most powerful decisions are made far earlier—on a designer’s blank sheet, argues Marie-Hélène Westholm-Knebel, ABB’s sustainability lead. Speaking in a detailed strategy overview, she outlined why companies that treat circularity as an end-of-life cleanup exercise are already years behind those that embed it from the moment a product is conceived.

The scale of the missed opportunity is enormous. The Circularity Gap Report 2026 pegs the annual global economic loss from underutilisation, premature disposal, and inefficient resource use at €25.4 trillion. For energy firms, that translates into billions of euros in avoidable material costs, locked-up value, and rising compliance pressure—much of it traceable to design choices about materials, repairability, and longevity.

Westholm-Knebel pointed to a quiet but decisive shift: customers no longer just ask for performance specs. They now increasingly demand life-cycle assessments (LCAs) and environmental product declarations (EPDs)—standardised, third-party-verified data that reveals a product’s full environmental footprint. Five years ago, such requests were rare; today, a missing EPD can silently disqualify a supplier. The most circular move, she added, may not be selling a new unit at all, but modernising and extending the life of an asset already in the field.

Behind ABB’s Push to Make Life-Cycle Data a Competitive Weapon

The Business Case for Circular Design in Energy

Westholm-Knebel’s core argument is that circularity suffers from a calendar mismatch. The biggest financial and environmental returns—avoided raw material procurement, lower waste handling, asset life extension—accrue over many years, while most energy companies still evaluate investments on an annual budget cycle. Without a strategic, long-term mindset, circular initiatives get framed as compliance chores rather than commercial wins. The result is a slow-motion drag on both margins and sustainability metrics.

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How EPDs Turn Sustainability into Revenue

One of the sharpest insights is the transformation of EPDs from a ‘nice-to-have’ into a sales tool. As operators and utilities come under scope-3 emissions reporting requirements, they need reliable supply-chain data. An ABB product that carries a verified EPD can be plugged directly into a customer’s carbon accounting, reducing their own reporting burden. When two otherwise comparable products sit side by side, the one with transparent life-cycle data wins—not because of a green premium, but because it solves a concrete buyer pain point. That turns sustainability transparency into a genuine competitive advantage.

ABB’s Own Route to Circularity

Internally, the company’s approach starts with a materiality assessment: mapping where in its value chain it has the greatest control and the most significant environmental impact. This pragmatic scoping avoids the paralysis of trying to do everything at once. Westholm-Knebel also noted a cultural dimension—the discipline that engineers and service teams have long applied to waste reduction and asset longevity is essentially circularity by another name. The task is not to invent new behaviours, but to connect existing operational excellence to circularity key performance indicators, making the invisible visible.

Practical Steps for Energy Leaders to Embed Circularity Now

  • Run a materiality assessment to identify where your organisation can genuinely control and influence circular outcomes. ABB’s experience shows this prevents dispersed efforts and focuses resources on the biggest levers.
  • Start publishing EPDs for core product lines. As Westholm-Knebel flagged, customers now treat verified life-cycle data as a tender qualifier; lacking one risks commercial exclusion, while having one removes a barrier for buyers’ own reporting.
  • Reframe circularity as a commercial discussion. Ask customers what they actually need—longer asset life, lower total cost of ownership, or supply-chain data—then align design and service models to deliver. In her words, there is no contradiction between circularity and commercial performance.
  • Tap your engineering and service teams. Decades of design discipline that minimise waste and keep customers’ assets running longer are already circularity in practice. Formalising these efforts with KPIs converts existing know-how into a structured advantage without adding a new layer of work.
  • Evaluate asset modernisation before replacement. When a customer’s equipment is due for an upgrade, assess whether refurbishment or a targeted modernisation can cut material use, cost, and downtime—often improving operational performance more than a full replacement would.