“Our power, our planet”.  

Earth Day 2025’s call to action is for everyone to get behind the renewable energy revolution and triple global clean energy generation by 2030.  

“At Rotork, we’re not just imagining it – we’re engineering it,” said Bernadette Harrison, Rotork’s Head of Product Sustainability. “Our cutting-edge flow control and actuation products are the vital arteries keeping the world flowing smoothly towards that sustainable tomorrow, for generations to come.” 

Spearheading this drive is the continual development of Rotork’s intelligent electric actuators, which provide enhanced control and diagnostics. This technology is helping to support renewable power industry applications at wind farms, solar power plants, and hydroelectric, biomass and geothermal power plants worldwide. 

Intelligent actuators 

For example, the intelligent electric actuators, together with Rotork’s services including Reliability Services and Intelligent Asset Management system (iAM), are specifically designed to operate in tough conditions, like offshore wind turbines that function without people on site. These systems give users operational insights into the health of their assets and planned maintenance capabilities, which reduce downtime, extend asset lifespan and optimise performance. 

Bernadette said: “Our new product development places a strong emphasis on products that help improve our customers’ efficiency and environmental performance. As part of this, our product development roadmaps consider a range of factors, including the reduction of emissions associated with the use of our sold products, to meet our own emissions reduction target and align with growing customer interest in higher efficiency, lower emissions products.” 

Rotork’s approach to sustainability focuses on three main areas: Operating responsibly; Enabling a sustainable future; and Making a positive social impact.  

“These reflect the way we run our business, the impact we can have through our products and services, and the way we engage with our people and communities,” Bernadette said. 

The company’s 2045 target is to be net zero for Scope 3 emissions, which relates to business activities throughout its value chain– these are predominantly emissions from the use of sold products and the supply chain.  

Bernadette continued: “We’ve also got a near-term target, and that is a 25% reduction in energy consumption across our portfolio by 2030. This is a key priority for us and a great benefit for our customers as it will reduce their emissions too. 

“We are also focused on understanding the emissions associated with the full lifecycle of our products. So it’s important that when our engineers are designing products, they explore opportunities to lower the carbon footprint over a product's lifecycle by considering environmental criteria such as recycled content, material reduction and designing products that can be easily disassembled to aid recycling.” 

Sustainable investment 

Rotork’s sustainability framework is paying dividends as more customers, particularly in the renewable power industry, are looking for suppliers who can provide products that support their own sustainable and energy efficiency goals.  

Bernadette added: “That’s where the beauty of these electric actuators lies. They’ll play a valuable role in the global shift toward reduced emissions, and there is the potential to use our iAM system to provide users with value-added services to monitor product performance and provide insights to support both predictive and preventive maintenance strategies to enhance the lifetime of our products.” 

Having a strong sustainability agenda is also an important factor for attracting new talent as many of the young people on Rotork’s Graduate Programme said one of the reasons they joined the company was because of its commitment to building a sustainable future.  

Bernadette concluded: “Our purpose at Rotork is ‘Keeping the World Flowing for Future Generations’. It’s a powerful goal to have in mind as we continue developing our products in a sustainable way to not only help future generations but also to support the health of the planet we are celebrating this Earth Day 2025.”