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Saburo Kato, Joint Representative, Konoe Fujimura, Joint Representative, Japan
Association of Environment and Society for the 21st Century,
The global economic meltdown which started from the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September of last year has had an enormous impact on all companies and especially the manufacturing industry. The major downturn in the auto industry due to the collapse of GM and Chrysler has had serious implications for the electronics industries which are tied deeply to the auto industry. As President Kaoru Yano says, NEC will suffer losses amounting to 296.60 billion yen in 2009, and the severe economic climate is expected to continue throughout the year. NEC must strive in these turbulent times just like many other companies.
However, President Yano believes these times can be a driving force for new growth in environmental measures, citing lithium ion batteries, energy savings in data centers and the development and use of the TANSO greenhouse gas measurement sensor, the world's first, in the IBUKI satellite. The challenges of industrial pollution and 2 oil shocks in the 1970's laid the groundwork for the rapid growth of Japanese companies and the entire economy, with NEC understanding these circumstances as opportunities continues to work to make today's challenges into opportunity as the driving force for new growth in environmental capability developed over many years, and opinions on this are described in this report.
NEC has worked tirelessly to achieve the "Environmental Management Vision 2010" which focuses on global warming measures in these past few years. Simply, NEC has offset CO2 generated from production and office activities and CO2 amounts from the use of NEC products by its customers using NEC provided solutions, matching all emissions and cuts. In short, NEC has set the ambitious goal of cutting CO2 to zero. The realization of 2010 is approaching, and progress is being made towards this goal, but we are still not there yet.
We learned to focus on energy savings from office building lighting and air conditioning and energy saving operations of AO equipment. We also are promoting progress in energy savings from improved air conditioning efficiency in the data centers as they generate heat and use tremendous amounts of energy. In addition, we are to reduce PFCs, HFCs and other greenhouse gases in the production division, while focusing much more on logistics than we ever did in the past. Meanwhile, we are targeting a 60% cut in CO2 at product use promoting product energy savings by greatly reducing the energy consumption of the products. The implication is that NEC provided solutions will reduce CO2 by 2.2 million tons compared to without this solution.
However, looking at the current numbers, it will be difficult to achieve the environmental management vision 2010 if we don't make a better effort because we're still not close to the target values for FY2011 (average value from FY2009 to 2011). So NEC will have to make more technology innovations and greater environmentally friendly actions by consumers using NEC products, and encourage voluntary efforts by introducing systems to support these activities as well as tax systems (including preferential treatment) and emission trading regulations.
The high level of NEC's environmental management is obvious based on an environmental management survey conducted each year by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun and the continuous awards received for excellence by other media and government agencies, but officers and employees must have environmental awareness and action in order to demonstrate this high level of environmental performance. NEC has generated these numbers each year for excellent personnel called "Eco Excellence". We at NEC who have been engaged in environmental training for many years have increased the number of people at the "Eco Excellence" class, and we are very happy that employee environmental awareness and environmental action have improved through the work of the NEC group. There were initially many who participated in FY 2009 group wide in the survey, and while the percentage of people belonging to the Eco Excellence class decreased compared to FY 2008, we expect a shift to the Eco Excellence class through the impact of training and practice where they will gain a variety of information.
It's worth noting the attempts to organize personnel training for environmental management. NEC has conducted environmental training for employees, management and officers in a variety of formats, but it's reassuring that efforts are being made for awareness of the "importance of personnel at companies" through further organization and fulfillment of this training. It's vital that environmental management be effectuated in the accelerating global deployment of future businesses by NEC, and it's essential that training be organized fully to train "personnel" for this, so the deployment of these attempts is the focus.
We have commented mainly on global warming measures, but NEC's environmental management is not just about this. Resource recycling and chemical substance management are also important, and we will touch on them simply and directly in a report, while the demonstrating of progress is recognized.
Looking only at this report, we see that new efforts requiring new growth and a greater level of effort than achieved up to now are being attempted despite the economic slowdown. If we venture to lay down the conditions in this report, resource problems and compliance problems may be mixed together and difficult to decipher in creating this report on global warming measures. We believe that summarizing only the global warming problems of interest to many readers first then separating items like resources and chemical substance management made this report easier to read.
