The climate change
Our society is living in the midst of climate change, which is now becoming increasingly evident even in temperate climates.
Basically, as in all areas of life, change must begin in small ways and habits must be reconsidered and some of them discarded in order for the climate to stabilize in the long term.
Everyone must make their contribution to this, and this responsibility applies not only in private life, but around the clock, i.e. also in the corporate environment.
Every company generates CO2 emissions through its business activities. Classic CO2 sources are the energy and materials used in production and administration, but employees’ commutes and business trips also generate greenhouse gas.
KST Moschkau, too, therefore asks itself the question every day: “What can a company do to ensure that not only its own day-to-day work, but also that of its customers, is as sustainable as possible?”
Fortunately, KST has been able to come up with some answers so far, which will be reconsidered, expanded and changed over time.
Sustainability begins on our own doorstep...
in its own responsibility.
The main site of the Moschkau Group in Kreuzau, to which KST also belongs, is a very good example.
The KST company building, which was completed in 1991 and was still a single-story building at the time, was extended in 2010 to create sufficient space for the new training center of the freshly founded KSTacademy. But this expansion of the business as well as the structural operations was not to be the end of the story. In order to offer the numerous training guests the ideal overnight accommodation, the Moschkau family decided to build a hotel, which went into operation just one year later on the opposite side of the street.
From the beginning of the planning process, the family was aware of the high energy requirements of a hotel and no longer wanted to rely exclusively on energy from the public grid. Since KST also has a high energy consumption, other companies were established that would essentially cover the infrastructural needs of KST and the Burgholz Hotel, in particular GEAB GmbH & Co. KG.
The initials GEAB reflect the purpose and the activity of the company exactly, because the “Grüne Energie Am Burgholz” supplies meanwhile a not inconsiderable part of the industrial area with environmentally friendly produced electricity and heat.
In detail, this means that the photovoltaic systems installed on the roofs of the hotel and KST supply 85% of the electricity and heat requirements of KST Moschkau, the hotel opposite at Burgholz and the GEAB company building with the help of CHP units. Additional heat coupling systems use up to 90 % of the heat emissions from the server and equipment rooms and feed this energy into the local area network. So you could say that the hotel’s guests shower in the morning with the nightly heat surplus from the KST servers.
In the meantime, 14 e-charging stations have also been installed, some of which are accessible to the public and thus supply not only commuters but also the entire fleet of vehicles of the local care service with electricity from solar power.
In addition, KST began converting its own vehicle fleet to electric vehicles back in 2014, so that by 2022, 40% of its vehicles are already purely electric.
With these solutions, the system house has already been able to make its own day-to-day work much more climate-friendly. But its working reality also extends to its customers’ activities.
Remote work as a climate saver
In addition to switching to electric vehicles, KST Support is working remotely as much as possible to keep emissions low.
In many companies, work shifted to the remote area during the Covid pandemic and the benefits of increased use of video conferencing and the like were recognized. But the 35 € webcam and standard conferencing software are comparatively inflexible, and many companies have looked to more customized and professional solutions. Because even if the world had held its breath, press conferences still had to be held, employees had to be informed and customers had to be kept up to date on new developments.
Virtual Studio as a central communication tool
Large corporations in particular, with a maximum variety of locations, employees and products, have sought short-term solutions and found them at KST in the form of the Innovation Center and the associated usage options of a Virtual Studio.
With the implementation of the studios and their additional equipment with the CamBot product line, the customers of KST Moschkau GmbH were able to maintain contact with all stakeholders even during the Covid pandemic. The Virtual Studio has developed into a central communication tool for them, with which the originally envisaged number of productions has quickly expanded many times over.
Here, in addition to health (in relation to Corona) and economic, unexpected ecological opportunities arose for the customers, so that, without necessarily planning it, they have made their working environment more climate-friendly.
System integration beyond camera technology
Now, of course, one could argue that a virtual studio alone won’t save the climate by a long shot. And that’s true, but it does have a significant impact on a company’s carbon footprint when shareholder meetings and press conferences are held exclusively online and trade show attendance is canceled due to the company’s own presentation capabilities.
But a virtual studio also leaves a carbon footprint. So to make the operation of a virtual studio even greener than its walls are painted, it should be powered by renewable energy.
Such a project could be implemented by KST in cooperation with GEAB in 2018 with the KST Innovation Center. The extensive integration of all systems enables optimal energy utilization and recovery; highly automated processes independently switch off systems that are not required or put them on standby. The 400 m² studio of the Innovation Center is heated exclusively with the waste heat of its own server room. Ideally, the entire studio can be shut down, including the heating and room lighting, at the touch of a single button on the control panel of Panasonic’s KAIROS server- and software-based video processing platform.
Support even outside your own borders
Sustainability is important to the company and they strive to make everyday life and project work as a system integrator as climate-friendly as possible. Fortunately, there are many technical options to choose from in Germany to make this a reality.
But there are many that are much harder hit by climate change than the inhabitants of the temperate climate of Central Europe. Displaced by environmental disasters and hunted with weapons – animals around the world suffer greatly from the damage humans inflict on their habitat.
Animal sanctuaries and sponsorships
Therefore, the Moschkau family and also the company KST Moschkau GmbH actively support various institutions in Namibia, such as the GocheGanas Nature Reserve, the Naankuse Foundation Wildlife Sanctuary and the Okonjima AfriCat Project in Namibia. Outstanding and important work in species conservation and ecosystem preservation is being done there, which KST directly supports through annual filming in Nambia. All recordings are available to the marketing and research departments of the reserves without reservation.
KST and the Moschkau family donate annually to these partners, support them by shooting high-quality footage, and have since become sponsors of several other animals in addition to the support for Hope, a baby rhino, which began in 2019.
Sponsorship 2019
In 2019, baby rhino Hope was adopted, who unfortunately lost the tough battle for her own life in 2020.
Sponsorships 2023
