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TOYOTA’S SHOWING ITS GREEN CREDENTIALS BY MAKING INROADS INTO THE SIX ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES TO BE MET WITHIN THE NEXT 33 YEARS
T
o go beyond zero environmental impact and achieve a net positive effect, Japan-headquartered Toyota has devised a global
initiative for its affiliates – the Toyota Environmental Challenge 2050 – setting ambitious targets that need to be met by the year 2050. The initiative comprises six
challenges (see previous spread) and at Toyota’s Durban plant, the third one – achieving plant zero CO2
emissions – is
well on its way to being realised through the successful implementation of a solar energy project. “To achieve zero CO2
, our electricity
consumption is the elephant in the room; it’s the biggest CO2
-emitting
utility,” says Riza Adam, Energy Specialist: Environmental Engineering at Toyota. “Solar technology is a clean, proven technology and it’s accessible. We needed to maximise its use in trying to achieve our targets.” To meet the target by 2050, Adam and his colleagues had to devise a strategy by working backwards from zero and dividing the current plant CO2
emissions into amounts
that must be decreased year on year through reduction projects across various technologies. With this strategy in place, the team
leapt into action. Given the fast pace of the automobile manufacturing environment, downtime is a definite
costs and 287 tonnes in CO2 emissions.
no-no. “We couldn’t do anything that might disrupt production. A disruption in electricity supply would have a tremendous impact on our manufacturing operations,” says Adam, “so we needed to prove the concept before we could roll it out on a mass scale.” The Durban plant operates over a day and a night shift, meaning solar can’t fully meet its needs at night or on overcast days, so it needs to be completely independent of the grid. After such times, grid power needs to kick back in and compensate for the shortfall. “This changeover must be seamless
or it would impact the manufacturing environment,” says Adam. “So we also had to prove that we could seamlessly switch between the two.” Over the course of 12 weeks, the
installation team worked to a tight timeline, installing 1 694 solar panels that covered a total area of 2 880m2
.
KwaZulu-Natal-based solar solution provider Solaray supplied and managed the installation, working closely with the Toyota team from initial conceptual design through to final commissioning. To date, the system’s saved more than 299 370kWh of energy – the equivalent of R320 330 in electricity
January was its “sunniest” month, with the system producing over 62 megawatt hours of electricity – equivalent to the amount of energy used to make 2,8 million cups of tea! “This was the first (pilot) project of
432kW, out of a total of 11MW of solar power potential which we’ve identified on the TSAM Durban site,” says Adam. “The remainder will be rolled out strategically, in line with our 2050 Zero CO2
environmental plan. We’ve
projected that we’ll complete the 11MW over the next nine years.” In addition to the solar power
projects, the Environmental Engineering Department at TSAM has completed over 170 energy projects, saving over 17 million kg of CO2
to
date. The projects include plant-wide roll-outs of heat pumps, LED lighting in manufacturing and office areas, automatic control of lighting and ventilation, decentralised compressed air systems and air-cooled air- conditioning systems. Another major achievement was the completion of the LPG-to-CNG project, converting 122 forklifts from running on liquid petroleum gas to compressed natural gas. This project achieved savings of 240 tonnes of CO2
1,7-year return on investment.
per year, with only a
PLANET-WISE POWER
19
WORDS: TONI MUIR. PHOTOGRAPHS: SUPPLIED BY TOYOTA SA
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