A latest of the latest business news, including Ford, Heinken and JP Morgan Chase.
Automotive company Ford has announced plans to transform its Dearborn site in Michigan over the next ten years. Under the plans, 30,000 employees will move from 70 buildings into two main campus locations – product development and global head office. The new buildings will reduce the site’s energy use by about 50%, save water and include a ‘sustainability showcase’ building, which will produce more energy than it consumes.
An update from Heineken on progress towards its 2020 ‘Brewing a Better World’ commitments has revealed that the Dutch beer company has reduced water consumption in its breweries worldwide by 26% since 2008. Meanwhile, CO2 emissions in production have decreased in both absolute and relative terms, the latter down 36% since 2008. Across the ‘barley to bar’ value chain, Heineken’s total carbon footprint has fallen 6.3% compared with the 2012 baseline.
Construction firm Morgan Sindall has more than halved its carbon emissions over the past six years. Since 2010, its carbon footprint has fallen 54%, and declined by 9.1% in 2015 alone. Initiatives to reduce emissions include: transport management and logistics planning on projects to minimise vehicle movements; procuring and specifying energy-efficient plant and equipment on projects, such as pumps, ventilation, lighting and heating; using hybrid generators and excavators; and supplying fuel efficient and low-carbon company cars, including hybrids.
Financial services business JP Morgan Chase has signed a deal with GE Current to install LED lighting in its 5,000 US branch offices, covering more than 2.3 million sqm of commercial building space. GE says the project is the world’s largest single-order LED installation and estimates that it will more than halve branches’ lighting-related energy use.
SCA, whose brands include TENA and Bodyform, has announced that its CO2 emissions in 2015 were 17.4% lower than in 2005, while water consumption in water-stressed regions declined by 18.7% between 2010 and 2015. The firm wants to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuels and purchased electricity and heating by 20% by 2020.
