“You could say, that we are world champions when it comes to daylight that comes in through the roof,”

Fleming Voetmann, Vice President of External Relations and Sustainability at VELUX.

In Denmark, rain falls roughly 170 days a year. So, when the sun finally breaks through, most Danes take notice. But while fresh air and daylight are essential for human well-being, not all buildings are designed to deliver them.

That’s where VELUX comes in.

Known globally for their roof windows and skylights, the company has spent more than 80 years finding ways to bring natural light indoors – and now, they’re also working to ensure that the nature it comes from stays protected.

In this episode of Next stop: Green business, we visit the company’s headquarters in Hørsholm, just north of Copenhagen. The site features not only the company’s latest architectural designs but also a biodiversity garden – part of a broader commitment to embed sustainability across the organisation.

Climate leadership with a long view

VELUX’s sustainability journey began long before ESG became a boardroom buzzword. As Vice President Fleming Voetmann explains, the company’s founder outlined its model company objective as early as 1965 – a principle rooted in doing “just a little bit better” across the board. Today, this legacy has been translated into measurable climate action, including a partnership with WWF to address historical emissions dating back to 1941.

“We’ve gone back to 1941 and calculated all of our historic Scope 1 and 2 emissions,” says Voetmann. “And then we have a partnership with WWF to eradicate those historic emissions.”

But sustainability at VELUX is about more than carbon. From recycling aluminium to reducing the need for raw material extraction, circularity plays a central role in their approach. Whether it’s minimising the environmental footprint of materials or promoting the reuse of existing building stock – for example, by supporting the transformation of unused lofts into apartments – VELUX sees resource efficiency as common sense and good business.

The numbers back it up. In the past decade, VELUX has cut its energy use in half while growing over 200%. At the same time, switching to renewable energy has strengthened their resilience in a volatile market.

“It’s been a good hedge in the last couple of years where energy prices have gone up and down — it has a very, very short payback time, so that’s really good business. And it’s all about common sense,”

Fleming Voetmann, Vice President of External Relations and Sustainability at VELUX.

From windows to ecosystems

At the company’s headquarters outside Copenhagen, a biodiversity garden spans much of the campus – a living example of VELUX’s efforts to integrate nature into its operations. The company has developed a biodiversity assessment method based on 18 parameters, allowing local teams to measure and improve conditions specific to each site.

“You could almost imagine that you have a spider web with 18 different parameters,” says Voetmann. “Then you know what the biodiversity impact is today – and can locally decide how you want to improve.”

That same attention to local context has shaped practical efforts in places like Poland, where factory teams collaborated with biodiversity experts to ensure new plantings matched indigenous species. For VELUX, it’s about making sure that well-intended sustainability actions actually deliver meaningful environmental value.

This mindset extends to the company’s broader production strategy. As the world’s largest manufacturer of roof windows, VELUX recognises both the scale of its impact and the opportunity to lead. From engaging employees in innovation to learning from smaller niche players, the company aims to scale solutions that benefit climate, biodiversity, and business alike.

“There’s no silver bullet,” says Voetmann. “It’s a combination of a lot of initiatives… and you need to have people on board.”

And when the discourse around green business gets muddled, Voetmann keeps it simple:

“If you really look at the numbers – beyond the headlines and some of the nonsense in the media – then it is good business.”

Fleming Voetmann, Vice President of External Relations and Sustainability at VELUX.

About the podcast: Next stop: Green business

Next stop: Green business is part of State of Green’s podcast universe and offers short, accessible episodes of no more than 15 minutes. Each episode focuses on one company’s green transition journey, recorded on-site to capture both atmosphere and authentic voices.

The podcast blends interviews, real-time conversations and on-site impressions, all shaped around a recurring set of questions that invite honest reflection and personal insights. Besides VELUX, the podcast series includes episodes with companies such as Danfoss, Grundfos, ROCKWOOL, PensionDanmark, FLS, NKT, Schneider Electric and Hempel. New episodes will drop throughout the remainder of 2025.

The miniseries is available on Spotify, Apple Podcast and stateofgreen.com.