Ferrero plans additional cogeneration sites as current crop slashes emissions 12%
In its recently published Corporate Social Responsibility Report 2009/10, the company said it would build more cogeneration plants after its current on site plants helped it reduce CO2 emissions by 12% and almost half all energy consumed.
Cogeneration is a method of heat and electricity generation where plants operate through gas turbines or engines. Energy produced through this technique can be used to power manufacturing facilities.
Current emissions savings
Ferrero said that in 2009 35% of its factories were powered from energy produced through its cogeneration plants in Europe. These plants also met 26% of heat requirements for the firm and provided 41% of total energy consumed.
Ferrero has cogeneration plants in Italy, Belgium and Poland. Its most recent addition was at its plant in Stadtallendorf, Germany, where a cogeneration plant powered by gas turbine was introduced in March this year.
The company has estimated that primary energy consumption has been cut 12% as a result of the plants and CO2 emissions have been reduced by 65,000 tonnes due to on site self-production.
More sites planned
Ferrero said in its report: “We foresee the activation of other generating plants by the end of 2013: natural gas installations totalling 4 MW (in Italy and Australia); a liquid biomass plant rated 9.6 MW (in Italy); biogas plants totalling about 3 MW (in Italy and Germany); wind turbines totalling 9 MW (in Italy and Poland).”
The firm hopes to have self-production energy capacity at all of its European sites by 2013 and to do so globally by 2020.
It also aims to source 30% of energy self-production from renewables. Ferrero hope this will help it reduce CO2 emissions by 40% by 2020 compared to 2007 levels and produce 100% of electric power consumed at all of its 15 sites.
” By the end of 2013, the total capacity of the Ferrero Group’s self-production plants will be about 90 MWe,” said the report.
“The setting up of high efficiency cogeneration or renewable plants, together with measures to raise the efficiency of our manufacturing processes, will lead to an additional benefit t in terms of lower energy consumption, with lower CO2 emissions as a result, “it continued.
The company said it was currently assessing the prospect of further investment on wind turbines in Italy and in Poland.
