Factories Get Greener

It's a Telling Moment When Larry Jutte, senior vice president-Honda of America Mfg. Inc., wants to use his last official media interview to talk about environmentally friendly manufacturing.

Retiring after 24 years at the auto maker, Jutte, 52, hired in only three years after Honda started making cars in the U.S. He's had a ringside seat to the auto maker's growth since, as he has moved up the corporate ladder to manage plants, product launches and purchasing. HAM built almost a million cars and trucks last year.

Jutte could have addressed any number of topics to sum up his experiences: Honda's fuel-economy leadership, the $19.5 billion in supplier purchases last year or the fact that 76% of Honda vehicles sold in the U.S. are produced in North America. Instead, he's focused on explaining something called an intelligent paint booth.

There's a reason. The environmental friendliness of Honda's fuel-sipping vehicle fleet is well-established, but the green credentials of its growing number of manufacturing plants are less evident. To those involved with building Honda cars and trucks in the U.S., that stings.

HAM has spent hundreds of millions of dollars and countless hours in recent years to chop harmful solvent emissions, reduce energy consumption and protect local wetlands. HAM's factories essentially have become as green as its cars, yet few have noticed.

“When you talk about paint shops being the biggest user of energy (at an auto assembly plant), and you can reduce that by 25%, that's a home run,” Jutte says.

Indeed it is. Automotive manufacturing and assembly operations guzzle energy and produce emissions and waste equivalent to that of thousands of homes and tens of thousands of vehicles.

As CO2 rules tighten around the world and more consumers demand their vehicles be produced in an environmentally friendly fashion, global auto makers have been stepping up their efforts to make manufacturing eco friendly. In many cases their progress is worth bragging about:

In June, BMW Mfg. Co. LLC in Spartanburg, SC, announced it was investing $12 million to expand the capacity and efficiency of its landfill methane program.

The system pipes in waste methane gas produced at a landfill 10 miles (16 km) away and uses it to power two new highly efficient gas turbine generators to produce 11,000 Kw of electricity, almost 30% of the plant's electrical demand and double that of the older system.

BMW says the landfill gas project has saved $5 million in energy costs per year. Adding the more efficient turbines will save an additional $2 million per year and reduce CO2 emissions by about 92,000 tons (83,000 t) per year. That annual reduction is equivalent to planting more than 23,000 acres (9,300 ha) of trees annually, BMW says.

From 2005 through 2008, General Motors Co. says it reduced its global manufacturing energy demands more than 23%. This reduction equals the energy required to heat and power 700,000 homes in the U.S.

The auto maker says it also is one of the leading users of renewable energy in the manufacturing sector, with these sources representing more than 2.5% of its total U.S. energy use. It boasts the world's largest rooftop solar photovoltaic power installation at its Zaragoza, Spain, car assembly plant.

The installation covers about 2 million sq.-ft. (186,000 sq.-m) of roof at the factory with about 85,000 solar panels. The installation generates about 15.1 million Kw of power annually, equivalent to the energy needed to power 1,500 homes for a year in Spain.

GM also has two of the largest solar power installations in the U.S. on the roofs of parts warehouse facilities in Rancho Cucamonga and Fontana, CA.

Over the past 10 years, Toyota Motor Corp. has added four big new manufacturing facilities in North America. But over that same 10-year period, it has reduced the amount of energy required to produce a vehicle 27%.

Nissan North America Inc.'s new U.S. headquarters in Franklin, TN, opened last year, is a model of environmental friendliness from top to bottom.

A key design element is an unusual sunshade system featuring horizontal rows of automated louvers on the exterior that change angles during the day to cut glare and heat from the direct sunlight striking the building, reducing the amount of energy needed to cool and light the facility.

Indoors, sensors detect window-light levels and automatically adjust the high-efficiency fluorescent lights to be brighter or dimmer.

Ford Motor Co.'s Dearborn Truck Plant boasts a 10.4-acre (4.2 ha) living roof, part of an extensive stormwater-management system that includes bio-swales and porous pavement to slow and cleanse the water.

Ford, as with other auto makers, also is implementing a sophisticated network-controlled system for air compressors used throughout its manufacturing operations. It allows for the real-time collection of key usage data through an enterprise-wide, Web-based data management tool.

Ford also is implementing a new paint process that eliminates the need for paint to cure after the prime coat. This technology, called “three wet,” reduces CO2 emissions 15% and volatile organic compound emissions 10%, Ford says.

Honda too has spent hundreds of millions of dollars switching over its painting operations to more eco-friendly water-based paints in recent years. In 2006, it spent $123 million, alone, on the Marysville paint shop.

Painting consumes large amounts of energy because the temperature and relative humidity of the air inside the paint booths has to be tightly controlled to achieve proper appearance and finish quality.

Conventional paint booths have set temperature and humidity levels. They pull in outside air and are constantly cycling on and off to heat or chill it to the right temperature setting. Just like when a home furnace or air conditioner constantly is turning on and off, it uses lots of energy.

Honda engineer Shubho Bhattacharya, working with researchers at Ohio State University, discovered top-quality finishes still could be achieved by simply keeping the paint booth within a certain temperature and humidity range.

This led them to create a system that uses a predictive control mechanism which analyzes weather changes and keeps the temperature and humidity within specific ranges.

“If it's 85° F (29° C) outside, maybe we can operate at 80° F (27° C), rather than push it all the way down to 70° (21° C) says Karen Heyob, associate chief engineer for North America region environmental performance.

“If the humidity outside is 65%, then we increase it enough to be within the (humidity level variance) window. For our (production) lines that use fresh air for the paint booths, we are reducing energy use by about 25%, mostly natural gas,” she says.

Best of all, the system costs little or nothing to install; only minor programming or controller changes are required, Jutte says. The system is being implemented throughout Honda's paint operations in North America.

Despite all the successes Honda and other auto makers have had in cleaning up the environment in recent years, such as dramatically cutting waste that ends up in landfills and all but eliminating hazardous substances, Heyob admits there still is progress to be made. Recycling sand and other materials used in engine-casting operations is one.

But this challenge doesn't detract from showcase stories where HAM's environmental impact has been no impact at all.

The giant Marysville manufacturing complex in Ohio, for example, is located at the headwaters of Big Darby Creek, a state and national scenic waterway.

Thanks to HAM's work in land conservation and water management, the creek remains as pristine as ever, Heyob says.

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