Nissan North America Inc. recently received the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 2014 Energy Star Partner of the Year Sustained Excellence Award in recognition of continued improvement of its energy management performance. This marks the third consecutive year that Nissan has won the award.
As the top Energy Star award, the Partner of the Year Sustained Excellence Award is given to organizations to recognize their commitment to becoming increasingly more energy efficient. Award winners are selected from 16,000 organizations that participate in the Energy Star program.
Nissan's work with Energy Star aligns with the company's sustainability strategy, the Nissan Green Program, and its efforts to reduce its carbon footprint 20 percent by 2016.
In 2013, the Nissan energy management team repaired enough compressed air system leaks in its U.S. manufacturing facilities to save 11,300 megawatt hours of energy.
"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," said John Martin, Nissan senior vice president.
The Nissan team estimated that more than 20 percent of compressed air used in manufacturing operations was wasted through air leaks at Nissan's manufacturing facilities in Smyrna and Decherd, Tenn., and Canton, Miss.
The team also learned how to catch a ray of sunlight to use it for lighting in the Nissan Decherd Powertrain Assembly Plant. This daylight harvesting technique allows for more optimal lighting inside the plant while using substantially less energy.
The energy management team also identified inefficiencies in Nissan's former paint plant at its vehicle assembly facility in Smyrna, which led to the installation of the company's most advanced paint plant. By using an innovative three-wet paint process that applies all three paint layers in succession before the vehicle goes into the oven, the new paint plant uses 30 percent less energy during the paint process.
Nissan also hosted 10 organizations including other Energy Star partners, suppliers and local government officials at its facility in Decherd, Tenn., where leaders shared best practices for energy management. Through those discussions, participants identified energy-saving ideas that could potentially save up to $1.5 million in energy costs.
For more information, visit www.nissan-global.com/EN/.
