GM Reducing Energy Use

[cincygoblue]

From the Grand Rapids Business Journal
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http://www.grbj.com/GRBJ/Nav/Login.htm?ArticleID={49A49932-2430-46D6-8174-43ADE3BAB000**

Automaker Going to the Dumps for Energy
The Grand Rapids Business Journal

GM Leads Nation In Heating, Cooling With Waste Gas
By David Czurak

DETROIT -- General Motors Corp. is well on its way to meeting the goal the company set in 2000 to reduce its total energy use at least 10 percent by the end of this year.

As unbelievable as this may sound, a big reason that the worlds largest automaker will reach that mark can be found in dumps located near five of its plants across the country.

Those landfills offer something aptly called landfill gas, which is emitted from the waste as it decomposes. That gas is half methane, a greenhouse gas that GM collects and then pumps into boilers that heat and cool the plants’ environments.

“It makes good business sense, number one,” said Joseph Bibeau, director of energy and utility services for the GM Worldwide Facilities Group.

‘And environmentally, it’s also the right thing to do,” he added. “In fact, one of our four key goals is to maximize the use of renewable energy wherever we can.

And not just with landfill gas, he added. “Landfill gas just happens to be one of the more successful forms of renewable energy.”

GM is using about 1.8 trillion BTUs of the landfill gas each year as a cheaper and cleaner alternative to natural gas. All that methane has helped the company lower its use of natural gas by 25 percent in just the past few years.

The World Resources Institute and the Green Power Market Development Group named GM as the largest non-utility user of landfill gas in the nation.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awarded the company its Energy Partner of the Year Award in 2003, back when the automaker was using landfill gas at plants in Toledo, Lake Orion, Fort Wayne and Shreveport.

Since receiving that honor, GM is now heating and cooling another assembly plant in Oklahoma City with the gas.

The automaker also has two other facilities where it is buying electricity that is generated from landfill gas and both are in Michigan. One is the spare parts operation headquarters in Grand Blanc and the other is a spare parts operation in Flint.

Al Hildreth, GM’s manager of renew****able energy, said the company has done this by working with whomever owns a landfill and the accompanying rights to the gas to gain access to the methane. In some cases, he said, it’s also been nec****essary to get easements to public rights-of-way in order to get the gas to a plant.

“We’ve been actively participating \vith EPA’s Landfill Methane Outreach Program since its inception, and probably back in the early 1990s or so was when we start****ed looking at it. In mid-1995, we did our first project at Toledo. Lake Orion came after that,” said Hildreth.

GM has calculated that it saves about $500,000 a year in energy costs at each plant by substituting landfill gas for natu****ral gas.

Bibeau said the actual savings for each plant varies, depending on the amount of landfill gas available from a particular site, but the half-million-dollar figure repre****sents a good average.

As for the start-up cost of getting the power source, Bibeau said GM has been fortunate with the agreement it has creat****ed.

“We have been able to work out an arrangement with a third-party investor and they absorb the cost,” Bibeau said.

“Our commitment is, we will consume a minimum quantity of landfill gas over a period of time, which has generally been about 10 years. During that 10 years, they recover their investment,” said Bibeau, who talked about the company’s use of landfill gas at the DTE Alternative Energ Conference last week.

“We’ve been successful doing this without any tip-front cost to General Motors.”

The situation is similar to how GM buys natural gas, paying a certain amount for each BTU. But with landfill gas, a BTU is less expensive and methane is much less harmful to the environment than car****bon dioxide emissions.

GM’s drive to reduce its energy use isn’t limited to plants in the United States, or even in North America.

The company has set a global goal of cutting its usage and is measuring that in gigawatt hours. GM used 38,587 GWh globally in 1999. By the end of 2003, the firm had reduced its global energy use to 34,145 GWh--a dip of 11.5 percent in four years.

[cincygoblue]

Hopefully they advertise this in their "Only GM" promotions. GM never gets credit for things like this, or the Fuel Cell partnership with Dow in Texas, or the land donations once they tear down a plant, or their record as the Benchmark for Manufacturing Safety, and many other things. GM really is a pretty good corporate citizen (ok all companies have issues), but if this was about Toyota, you'd see it all over the place.

[uujjj]

Wh****t's up wi****th the r****andom star****s a****ll ove****r the arti****cle?

[GM_Guy81]

lol. I really wish things like this would get in the news. GM is one of the more environmentally friendly companies out there, and they get nothing but raked across the coals.

[parker]

I hope the others take notice. Good job GM

[JVal14]

Read between the lines guys. The next Silverado will be powered by a 5.3L running on LANDFILL GAS! It's BRILLIANT! That's why they haven't been bothering with the hybrid nonsense. After that will be a Cobalt running on corn oil, then a 'Vette running on 100 proof Southern Comfort. Pure genious

[Rumblebuffin]

I agree with everyone in here saying GM does not get credit for stuff like this.

[hudson32]

GM is very proactive in community efforts such as these. It actively strives to be a good neighbor. I don't know why the media is not reporting it. Any bad GM news, however gets amplified exponentially.

[spudglo08]

All the ricer fans and enviromentalist beotches say:But I thought allmighty Toyohandassen were the co's that could do good stuff.They have better hybrids than GM so this isn't true.GM is an earth killer.My Toyotas exhaust smells like flowers and spring rain........Well they will still say this because it won't make any major news outlets.But from a pro GM guy go GM.First Hybrid busses,and now this while small is stil good, and soon Hydrogen cars hopefully.

[SilverZ]

Originally Posted by cincygoblue

--a dip of 11.5 percent in four years.

I wonder if this has anything to do with plants being totally shutdown more now then 4 years ago? I wouldnt doubt it.