Mitsubishi Electric Corp announced its environmental plan for fiscal years 2009 to 2011. The company aims to reduce its annual CO2 emissions in production activities to 510,000t, which is a reduction of 24% from the emissions in fiscal 1990.
A total of 70,000t of CO2 emissions from the semiconductor plant that the company acquired in 2008 from Renesas Technology Corp have been added to the evaluation basis, but variations in CO2 emissions due to future changes in the production volume are not included.
The company expects a drop in sales for 2009, but emissions will increase by 30,000 to 40,000t when PV Cell Plant #2, which will be completed in December 2009 in Iida City, Nagano Prefecture, Japan, starts operation. The company forecasts its production volume will increase at a rate of 3% per year until 2020.
Mitsubishi set a stricter goal this time responding to the growing public concern about the environment and took some measures such as changing the evaluation basis from the output per unit, which gives considerations to increases in the production scale, to the total output amount, according to the company.
As measures for cutting CO2 emissions in production activities, Mitsubishi will enhance the efficiency of its equipment, such as air conditioners in the plants, and improve its production lines. The company aims to reduce CO2 emissions by 20,000t, which is twice the amount of the reduction goal set out by the previous environmental plan implemented from fiscal 2006 to 2008, through improvements of production lines.
Specifically, Mitsubishi will introduce inverters and reexamine output reference values and operation conditions, it said. The amount of its environmental investment, such as that in production lines, is currently about 0.1% of the production value, which amounts to roughly three billion yen (approx US$310 million) per year, according to the company. It expects the ratio will increase responding to the needs for measures to address environmental issues.
This time, in addition to Mitsubishi Electric, CO2 reduction measures will also be taken by its 69 affiliates, the company's production bases in Japan and abroad. And a special focus is placed on 22 overseas affiliates. Emissions from these affiliates in 2008 exceeded those in fiscal 2005, which was set as a reference year. However, the company aims to reduce the amount by 4% to 230,000t in fiscal 2011.
Mitsubishi Electric set up a goal to be reached by the entire group in the "Environmental Vision 2021," which was announced in 2007 and plans to cut CO2 emissions generated by the entire group including overseas affiliates by 30% to 170,000t in 2020.
"How to realize this goal is the issue. We need to accelerate things," said Toshiaki Yoshizumi, executive officer and director for Corporate Total Productivity Management & Environmental Programs at Mitsubishi Electric.
Among the company's foreign affiliates, air conditioner and air conditioner compressor manufacturers in Thailand and China, in particular, generate large amounts of CO2 emissions. Some of the plants in these countries have already taken measures, but many of them are still at the stage of preparing for the measures to be implemented for plant equipment and production lines and evaluating the effects of the measures.
However, Mitsubishi Electric considers that benefits of the measures are substantial. Electricity costs in China and Thailand are higher than those in Japan. Therefore, if power consumption is reduced through CO2 reduction, the overall production cost will be reduced, according to the company.
The company will increase the number of products for which CO2 emissions resulting from usage will be reduced by 25% from fiscal 2000 from 43 items to 80 items. The items will include FA equipments, consumer electronic appliances including household air purifiers, futon driers, humidifiers and weather radars.
The number of products whose resource loading in manufacturing will be reduced by 18% from the amount in fiscal 2000 will be increased from 32 to 60 items. Also, Mitsubishi Electric will utilize the self-recycling system of plastic materials.
The final disposal rate at each base of Mitsubishi Electric is set at less than 0.1%. In respect to its affiliates, the targets are less than 0.5% for domestic companies and less than 3.0% for overseas companies, which will be realized by strictly separating the wastes.
The company plans to increase the sales from global warming countermeasure businesses, including businesses related to heat pumps, power semiconductors, photovoltaic generation systems and power plants, from the current sales of about ¥600 billion to ¥1.3 trillion in 2015.
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