Process Improvements

Process Improvements

The following is a brief overview of process improvements undertaken by members of The Pew Center's Business Environmental Leadership Council (BELC).

For more information on each of these companies efforts to address climate change, please see the Businesses Leading The Way section of this Web site.

Air Products and Chemicals

• Air Products and Chemicals, working with semiconductor manufacturers, helped to optimize chamber-cleaning processes resulting in perfluorocarbon (PFC) emission reductions of as much as 85 percent.
  
  
• Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. was presented with the 2002 Climate Protection Award from the EPA for its role in reducing PFCs in the semiconductor industry. For more information, visit Air Product's EPA Award site.
  
  
• As the world’s leading supplier of hydrogen, Air Products is providing hydrogen to petroleum refiners to help them meet government mandates worldwide for producing low-sulfur, cleaner burning gasoline and diesel fuel. Hydrogen Article
  
• Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. has helped pioneered the LNG industry and have been designing liquefaction systems and supplying cryogenic heat exchangers for LNG plants all over the world for the past 30 years. Building on the leadership position, Air Products saw a breakthrough in liquefaction technology with the introduction of the AP-X™ process in 2004. The new AP-X™ process is capable of producing 50% more LNG product in a single train process. Such projects are key enablers to bringing greater quantities of clean natural gas to the energy consuming markets of the world.
  
  
• For the glass industry, Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. has enabled yield and efficiency improvements, as well as pollutant emission reduction, from its experience with oxy-fuel technology. For more information, please visit Oxy-fuel for Glassmaking.
  
  
• For the metals industry, Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. has also provided efficiency improvements via oxy-fuel technology. Article: When Do Oxyfuels Make Sense?
  

Alcoa

• Alcoa’s 26 aluminum smelters reduced PFC-generating “anode effects” by 75 percent between 1990 and 2002, resulting in an annual savings of 12 million metric tons of CO2e.

American Electric Power

• American Electric Power is a charter member of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Sulfur Hexafluoride Emissions Reduction Partnership for Electric Power Systems.

Baxter

• Baxter reduced its process-related GHG emissions by 99 percent between 1996 and 2002 by phasing out the use of high-GWP10 solvents. These process changes resulted in reductions of over 3 million metric tons of CO2e.

Cinergy Corp.

• Cinergy Corp. is a charter member of the U.S. EPA’s Sulfur Hexafluoride (SF6) Emissions Reduction Partnership for Electric Power Systems.

Entergy

• Entergy has replaced electrical equipment containing SF6.

Exelon

• SF6 Reduction: SF₆ is a highly potent greenhouse gas used for insulation and current interruption in electric transmission and distribution equipment. Exelon’s ComEd and PECO subsidiaries are members of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Sulfur Hexafluoride Emissions Reduction Partnership for Electric Power Systems.

Intel

• Intel has deployed energy conservation solutions across the company by retrofitting boilers with more efficient Autoflame™ control technology. At Intel’s New Mexico site, five boilers were successfully retrofitted at a cost of about $250K. The return on investment realized was $170,000 per year in natural gas fuel costs, $50,000 per year in electrical energy savings, and $40,000 per year in boiler maintenance costs. Similarly, where the new technology has been installed, there has been an average reduction of nitrous oxide (N2O) and carbon monoxide (CO) emissions from the boilers of 32 percent and 92 percent respectively.

PG&E Corporation

• PG&E Corporation’s Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) became a charter member of the U.S. EPA’s Natural Gas Star Partnership in 1994, and its former subsidiary, National Energy and Gas Transmission (NEGT), joined the program in 2000. Through the systematic replacement of equipment and older pipelines, the company has adopted cost-effective technologies and best management practices to reduce methane losses. Efforts in this area continue to include focused inspections and maintenance at compressor stations, modifying system operations to reduce venting, and reducing frequency of engine restarts with gas. In 2002, the PG&E and NEGT undertook numerous activities that resulted in over 185,000 tons of methane avoided. These 2002 emissions avoided equate to over 4.2 million tons of CO2e.

• PG&E is a charter member of the U.S. EPA’s Sulfur Hexafluoride Emissions Reduction Partnership for Electric Power Systems.

Rio Tinto

• Rio Tinto reduced annual GHG emissions by 1.76 million tons compared to business as usual through projects undertaken with the Australian Government's Greenhouse Challenge, a program that helps industry identify opportunities to mitigate emissions.

Royal Dutch/Shell

• Royal Dutch/Shell has ended the practice of continuous venting of gas at oil production facilities and has a target to end continuous operational flaring at such facilities by 2008.

Toyota

• Toyota reduced the energy required to produce a vehicle manufactured in its North American facilities by 7 percent in fiscal year 2002 through process improvements, such as reducing compressed air usage by improving system operating control, and the development of waste heat recovery systems in painting shops.

Wisconsin Energy Corp.

• Wisconsin Energy Corporation is a charter member of the U.S. EPA’s Sulfur Hexafluoride Emissions Reduction Partnership for Electric Power Systems. Wisconsin Energy has committed to reducing SF6 emissions to less than five percent of its equipment's nameplate capacity. By the end of 2002, Wisconsin Energy reduced annual emissions of SF6 by nearly 95 percent, or to 2.3 percent of total capacity.