From Steel to Standard: How Schindler Built the Industry’s First Low-Carbon Elevator

The Challenge: Sustainable & Cost Competitive Production

Legislation such as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) pushes for more sustainable action from organizations operating in or with the European Union, making environmental performance both a reporting obligation and a coordinated effort along the supply chain.

Corina sees the direct effects of increased sustainability awareness in Schindler’s clientele. It’s more important than ever for organizations to show their environmental data transparently; it could be a deciding factor for a prospective buyer choosing between two options.

“It’s a prerequisite to make sure that our product is competitive from both a sustainability and a costing side,” she explains.

According to Corina, clients today expect comprehensive life cycle assessments and product carbon footprints to understand the impacts of their purchases and to make sustainable choices. This is a challenge for Schindler’s elevator supply chain, as steel production is carbon-intensive, and the material makes up 80% of an elevator’s mass.

For companies like Schindler, challenges can arise when collecting data and coordinating plans with the supply chain, especially with smaller, less mature suppliers.

The Solution: Conversation & Background Data

To create a product that is competitive in today’s market, at both a sustainability and cost level, data is required. There also needs to be a way to communicate that data and the resulting production choice to the consumer, which Schindler has implemented on their private customer platform.

“We have a CO2 calculator for our products that uses ecoinvent emission factors,” Corina says. “So, if a customer buys one of our elevators, they can have the full carbon footprint calculation of that specific elevator.”

The transparency provided by a CO2 calculator is essential for some of Schindler’s clients. With this information, creating a reliable footprint for an entire building becomes easier—and this is strongly encouraged for building projects in Europe. Transparency and education are important for buyers at the start of their journey, and Schindler supports those needs through its tools.

The ecoinvent background database provides the environmental data to enable tools such as Schindler’s CO2 calculator. For Schindler’s elevators, this translates to LCA modeling for a twenty-year-long use phase using data from the ecoinvent energy sector, and product carbon footprints and EPDs built with steel data from the metals sector.

ecoinvent is a trusted source of data rooted in science. Reliance on trusted and acknowledged data sources is all the more important for product design and sustainable purchasing decisions.

In Practice: Building the Low-Carbon-Emissions-Steel Elevator

Being the first in the industry to release a low-carbon-emission-steel elevator required data, coordination, and strategy.

The data gathering stage revealed significant variation in supplier maturity. Not every supplier arrived at the conversation with the same level of knowledge.

“With the smaller suppliers, which are less mature—less aware—it’s also an educational journey,” says Corina. “It makes a huge difference if the supplier has their own sustainability targets already.”

Schindler has launched a supplier engagement program that aims to improve supplier knowledge and buy-in throughout the value chain.

Once the suppliers are on board, primary data is collected to create an environmental assessment, such as a Product Carbon Footprint (PCF). These assessments are used to discover emission hotspots, followed by material sourcing strategies that are built to minimize carbon impacts.

In situations where the supplier cannot provide the requisite data, a background database such as ecoinvent is used. For documenting the use phase of Schindler’s elevator, which exceeds twenty years, ecoinvent provides Scope 3 energy emission factors, enabling the organization to study the entire life cycle of its product.

According to Corina, “data is fundamental to understanding the carbon footprint of our elevator systems.” 

In the case of Schindler’s low-carbon-emission elevator, reworking the production strategy required further negotiations with key suppliers to line up production timings with each other, Schindler, and the client.

One result is that Schindler can celebrate being the first low-carbon-emission-steel elevator manufacturer. Their innovation reduces emissions for key components by up to 75% compared to conventionally produced steel. This separates them from their competitors while simultaneously streamlining their production.

Corina shared more about how Schindler achieved all of this at the ecoinvent panel event at Climate Week Zurich.

The Bigger Shift: CBAM and the ‘Green’ Steel Market

CBAM is the European Union’s tool for fair carbon emissions pricing, meaning that imported goods will effectively be taxed depending on their embedded greenhouse gas emissions. This legislation aims to encourage cleaner industrial production in non-EU countries and came into effect in 2026.

Commercializing low-emission technologies has encouraged the steel market—currently responsible for the production of 7-8% of global carbon dioxide emissions—to produce cleaner steel. One resulting technology is H2 steel, which is produced using renewable or fossil-free electricity. For organizations whose core products rely on steel, it has significant implications for managing mandatory carbon and reporting requirements as the 2050 deadline of the Paris Agreement approaches.

New technologies aren’t the only solution, however, as Corina believes in the importance of circularity and recycled content.

“Circularity and recycled content will become more and more important, and this needs to be accounted for when building properties,” she says.

It’s the reason why Schindler chose ecoinvent as the background data provider to fuel their EPDs and PCFs.

See Corina and other professionals in the sustainability field talk more on their work in our panel recording: Beyond the Pledge: Embedding Sustainability into Business DNA.

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