In June 2020 we have published the names of the 12 pilot companies that decided to participate in E2DRIVER, increase their energy efficiency and thereby contribute to the global effort to reduce carbon emissions. The first issue in our series introduced the three French pilot companies. Although planned as a country-per-issue series, the current – second – edition features three firms from Italy and two from Spain. The third Spanish pilot company, Vauste, could unfortunately not continue participating in E2DRIVER for COVID-19-related reasons.
In this issue, the Spanish companies FAE and Grupo Mecacontrol as well as their Italian counterparts FOMT, Mollebalestra and SIVE present themselves, their views on why energy efficiency is important to their operations and why they decided to join E2DRIVER.
SPAIN
Francisco Alberto – FAE
Why do you consider energy efficiency important in your company?
For years, FAE has been committed to the environment and tries to improve its processes in order to reduce its ecological footprint.
Little by little, small actions have been carried out to be more respectful with the environment and thus reduce our ecological footprint on the planet. We have made improvements in the lighting, replacing the old fluorescents with LED lighting, and we have adapted a room with DALI lighting. We have also removed conventional urinals for ones that do not need water, we have added electric hand dryers thus reducing the use of paper hand dryers.
In addition, in our production processes, we try to optimize to the maximum to obtain a greater yield. At this point we want to continue improving our processes to be more competitive.
Why did you choose to participate in E2DRIVER?
We chose to participate in E2DRIVER because it is a good opportunity to learn from great specialists in the field and also to share knowledge with great leaders in the automotive sector.
GRUPO MECACONTROL
Why do you consider energy efficiency important in your company?
As relevant as other business areas, energy management must be one of the pillars of a company. Energy consumption is one of the biggest expenses that any company usually faces, and it is one that has been tackled the least so far.
We hope that the implementation of energy efficiency in Mecacontrol Group will help us detect and correct unknown consumption sinks, energy inefficiencies, elimination of redundant processes, replacement of old equipment that wastes energy, etc. We believe that by means of corrective measures it is possible to generate an increase of such efficiency that results in a lower electric bill and, therefore, in an economic saving and in a greener and more sustainable company.
Why did you choose to participate in E2DRIVER?
We got to know about this project through Sernauto, one of Spain’s leading automotive companies. After receiving the information from them, we studied it and saw that, as in other areas of the company, we were making improvements to adapt to the new market needs in the field of energy efficiency. Although we had made our « little steps », we had not messed with it.
One of the problems we have been facing historically, when trying to implement energy efficiency in the Mecacontrol Group, has been the lack of specific training in this field. We understand that energy efficiency must be managed from the lowest level of the company to the highest one, and until now, although we had detected very specific training at a very technical level, we had not found training for the intermediate and low levels. We therefore hope that with this project we can go deeper into this field and become a more sustainable company.