## 3 Results
### How Do German Manufacturers React to the Increasing Societal Pressure for Decarbonisation? Having gained a better understanding of the measures intended and those put in place to reduce companies' carbon footprint, and about their priorities regarding the development of new products and manufacturing processes for them, the big question remaining is how far companies are actually willing to go. Are Companies Planning to Become Net Carbon Neutral? In addition to the small number of big companies that pledged to become net carbon neutral, there is a large proportion of the sample that has similar intentions. Nearly 60% of companies either plan (27%), have started (31%), or concluded (1%) the implementation to reach the state of net-zero carbon. The prefix \"net\" is of particular importance, as the ability to fully decarbonise is limited to a few cases, such as forestry's, but, at present, impossible for most manufacturing sectors. A total of 28% of companies therefore state that they are not pursuing that road, due to technical (15%), economic (11%), or other reasons (2%). Once carbon has a price across all sectors and company sizes, and is not, as at present, only affecting larger and simultaneously energy-intensive companies via the EU ETS, the share of economic reasons may shrink. Depending on the level of the carbon price, a point may be reached at which process redesigns become an option. The price levels at which process redesigns become an option, however, remain to be further researched. From a **company size** perspective, the ambition to fully decarbonise is higher than average in large (65%) and small (64%) companies, and significantly below average for micro companies (49%), possibly because these may have the greatest difficulties in assessing how to do it (without changing the better part of their machinery). This assumption is underlined by looking more closely at the fairly similar share of companies who have started the implementation across all sectors; here, only the large companies are ahead by 6% points. When it comes to planned action, small companies are greatly above average (34%) and micro companies are significantly below average (18%). It is those companies that have the highest rate of unknowns (12%), in contrast to large companies (7%) that have largely made their decision. Economic reasons are, as alluded to above, a larger issue for micro companies (15%), as are technical reasons (20%), keeping them at a distance from becoming net carbon neutral. To some extent, the latter also applies to above average- to medium-sized companies (15%) (cf. Figure 4a). For **energy intensity**, the share of companies aiming towards carbon neutrality is unsurprisingly highest amongst the non-energy intensive companies (68%), with moderately (65%) and less energy intensive companies (64%) close behind. As expected, energy intensive companies less often strive towards net carbon neutrality; however, nearly the majority (49%) does strive towards this goal. Looking more closely at the data, provides a similar picture: energy intensive companies (24%) lag 10% points behind in implementing measures towards carbon neutrality, and 6-9% points in planned action (22%). Technical reasons keep energy intensive companies away from carbon neutrality, 2.4 times more often (24%) than non-energy intensive companies (10%), confirming the assumption made earlier when looking at the development of new products. Similarly, economic reasons are the prohibitive factor for 16% of energy intensive companies, which is twice as many as for non-energy intensive companies (8%), understandable due to the great transformation and costs involved in many cases. The share of undecided companies is highest among less energy intensive companies (10%), and on a lower level for the other intensity classes (6-7%) (cf. Figure 4b). Figure 4: (**a**) Plans to become net zero carbon, by company size; (**b**) plans to become net zero carbon, by energy intensity; and (**c**) plans to become net-zero carbon, by sector.