Ford Motor Company set a goal in 2010 to cut emissions from their manufacturing operations by 30 percent per vehicle within 15 years, a goal which the company just reached — eight years faster than anticipated.
Ford’s Environmental Quality Office set the goal back in 2010 in an effort to curb the amount of carbon dioxide emissions the company produces throughout the manufacturing process.
The company achieved the goal through a variety of changes to their manufacturing plants, including the implementation of LED lighting, the construction of energy efficient facilities and consolidations within Ford plants.
Andy Hobbs, the director of Ford’s environmental quality office, said changes to the way Ford paints vehicles also helped to significantly reduce emissions output.
“Painting operations use a large amount of energy,” Hobb said in a statement. “Introducing technology that allows wet-on-wet paint application and eliminates a drying oven in more plants has significantly decreased energy use while maintaining quality.”
Ford also installed over 100,000 LED light fixtures in manufacturing facilities to increase energy efficiency. The result? Ford eliminate 3.4 million metric tons of CO2 emissions that would have been released into the atmosphere if it wasn’t for Ford’s emissions initiative.
That’s equal to emissions from more than 728,000 passenger vehicles driven for an entire year, Ford says.
Ford’s group vice president of manufacturing and labor affairs, Bruce Hettle said Ford is proud of the result of their environmental efforts.
“We are proud of the work we have done to achieve this goal,” Hettle said. “We’ve made several improvements to our manufacturing operations – from the lighting we use to plant consolidations – all of which played a role in dramatically reducing our CO2 footprint.”
Hettle said the work doesn’t stop there for the Dearborn auto manufacturer. He says Ford will work to increase their use of renewable energy sources, while also working to decrease vehicle emissions in conjunction with the Paris Climate Accord.
“We will continue to set ambitious goals and work to create innovative practices to achieve them,” he said. “Our next strategy will focus on increasing Ford’s use of renewable energy while maintaining our energy efficiencies.”
Ford has already been working to curb vehicle emissions, investing $11 billion into the development of hybrid and fully electric vehicles. Ford hopes to have 40 models that are either hybrid or fully electric by 2022.
Categories:
News
