Teijin to deploy power cogeneration at Japanese facility
Japan’s Teijin Limited says that it will convert the in-house fossil fuel-based power generation facilities currently in use at its Matsuyama plant to a cogeneration system running on city gas. Cogeneration systems supply both electricity and heat on premise, and their high energy efficiency result in significant reductions in carbon dioxide emissions.
Teijin says it has established the long-term goal of achieving net-zero emissions across its own sites by fiscal 2050. Specific targets include reducing internal CO2 emissions by 30% of fiscal 2018 levels by fiscal 2030. Allowing for future business growth, this requires the company to reduce its annual CO2 emissions by approximately 600,000 tonnes/year; the introduction of this gas-based cogeneration system in its Matsuyama plant is expected to achieve around 30% of this reduction. The gas will be replaced with carbon-neutral energy supplies in the future, further reducing the plant’s environmental footprint.
In January 2021, Teijin introduced internal carbon pricing (ICP) to determine the economic efficiency of investments in new facilities. The company based its decision to make this particular investment on forecasted cost reductions of EUR50/tonne of CO2 emissions. The total investment is expected to be over JPY 10 billion, including the replacement of existing aging power receiving and distribution equipment, and the generating capacity of the new power plant is expected to be approximately 30,000 kW.
The new power generation facility in the Matsuyama plant will become fully operational in fiscal 2025, in line with Teijin’s objective of becoming the first Japanese chemical fibre manufacturer to realise complete decarbonisation of its power generation globally. Going forward, Teijin says it will continue its adoption of renewable energy supplies and steadily enhance energy efficiency and energy conservation in each of its business domains, with the aim of achieving its respective emission reduction targets by fiscal 2030 and 2050.
