14 DAY TRIAL // Just yesterday, Japanese multinational automotive manufacturer Nissan announced that it won the 2014 ENERGY STAR Sustained Excellence Award.
The automaker was presented with the award by the Environmental Protection Agency as a means to congratulate it for pushing for energy efficiency at its plants in the United States.
On its website, the multinational automotive manufacturer details that the ENERGY STAR Sustained Excellence Award is offered to companies, businesses or organizations that are constantly striving to up the energy efficiency of their operations, and that Nissan now wins this award for the third time in a row.
Nissan explains that, as part of its attempts to become more environmentally friendly by reducing energy loss, it went through the trouble of inspecting the tubing in the compressed air system in its manufacturing facilities across the United States, and fixing nearly all leaks detected in this manner.
The automaker claims that, as a result of this initiative, it managed to conserve over 20% of the pressurized air escaping through leaks. The result was that, just last year, 11,300 megawatt hours of energy were saved from being wasted.
“We saved enough energy to power more than 700 homes for a year, offset the greenhouse gas emissions of nearly 2,800 tons of landfill waste or better yet, to drive the all-electric Nissan LEAF around the earth more than 40,000 times,” John Martin, Nissan's senior vice president, said.
According to the official Nissan website, the facilities where this energy saving was documented were manufacturing plants in Smyrna and Decherd in Tennessee, and Canton in Mississippi.
In Decherd, the Japanese multinational automotive manufacturer moved to improve energy efficiency by harvesting natural light with the help of skylights, and, in Smyrna, Nissan implemented an innovative paint process whose energy use was 30% lower than that of conventional ones.
What's more, the company claims to have helped several other facilities reduce their yearly energy consumption. Thus, Nissan says that, with its help, a total of 14 schools in Mississippi have managed to obtain an ENERGY STAR certification for their buildings. The company estimates that, all in all, the drop in power-related costs documented at these schools is the equivalent of 10 teachers' salaries.
Commenting on the company's efforts to constantly improve on its ecological footprint and help others do the same, John Martin said, “With major manufacturing operations in the Southeast and multiple R&D, design, testing and distribution facilities across the country, we recognize the importance of being environmental stewards within the community.”
“It's more than just a sustainability strategy; it makes good business sense for Nissan—now and for the road ahead,” Nissan's senior vice president went on to argue.