SUSTAINABILITY
SUSTAINABILITY ROUND-UP
ROCKWOOL TO TRIAL
esearch into a new low carbon technology, funded by the Net Zero Innovation Portfolio under the Department of Business, Energy
and Industrial Strategy, will test the potential for replacement of natural gas with green hydrogen in the manufacturing process of ROCKWOOL insulation at its Bridgend factory. The project is a partnership between ROCKWOOL Ltd, Marubeni Europower and Mott MacDonald to develop a potential end-to-end hydrogen solution in South Wales. ROCKWOOL’s stone wool insulation currently uses natural gas in the combustion systems and curing ovens. This new scheme will investigate the viability of using on-site produced green hydrogen.
Wind generation By including electrolytic hydrogen production from local wind and solar renewable power in Bridgend, the project could demonstrate the viability of green hydrogen as an end-to-end fuel solution in industrial processes. BEIS are supporting the consortium with nearly £400,000 in funding and strategic support for the project as part of a wider announcement of investments into industrial hydrogen projects across the UK. Rafael Rodriguez, Managing Director of
GREEN HYDROGEN POWER SOURCE R
ROCKWOOL Ltd and Senior Vice President of ROCKWOOL Group, said: “Action is needed now on climate change. We already produce a net negative product with data showing that over their lifetime, ROCKWOOL insulation products sold in 2022 will save over 100 times more carbon than was emitted during their production. However, we want to do even more to reduce our operation impact. “ROCKWOOL Group has set ambitious decarbonisation targets verified by the Science Based Target initiative, and we are looking forward to enhancing our own understanding about the potential for green hydrogen use in our business.”
Greener energy Tomoki Nishino, President and CEO of Marubeni Europower Ltd, said: “We are honoured to be part of this project to carry out a large scale decarbonisation study at the ROCKWOOL plant, contributing
Resapol builds the foundations for a sustainable future R 30
esapol implemented a waste management strategy to streamline, simplify and introduce efficient methods of recycling; last year
this resulted in 97.14% of waste diverted from landfills meaning a reduction of 68% in landfilled weight from 2018 to 2021.
Becoming a paperless business via the
introduction of various digital tools throughout the company has also accelerated over the last two years thereby reducing paper waste. Furthermore in 2020 the business introduced a new company vehicle policy with only hybrid and electric vehicle options available, supported by electric charge points installed across all company depots nationwide. n
A supplement to builders merchants journal November 2022
Marubeni’s experience in power generation and infrastructure development. We believe that this feasibility study is directly relevant to other factories of a similar kind that need to take similar measures. I hope other industries can also benefit from our study and that this type of initiative spreads widely across South Wales Industrial Cluster, Wales, UK, and beyond. Moreover, Marubeni hopes to provide unique value to UK as a Japanese company with an access to hydrogen supply chain partners and Japanese governmental subsidy funding supports, for the purpose of promoting further mutually beneficial collaboration between UK and Japan.” n
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