energetic

November 7, 2007
Source: Honda News

07/11/2007 - CHICAGO - American Honda Motor Co., Inc., a gold sponsor of Greenbuild 2007 and USGBC member since 2000, has undertaken a series of new green building initiatives as part of a leading effort to further reduce the environmental impact of Honda's operations and products in the U.S. and throughout North America. The company will certify two new facilities to the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards in its 2009 fiscal year (ending March 31, 2009).

Honda R&D America's Acura Design Studio in Torrance, Calif., and American Honda's Midwestern Consolidation Center in Troy, Ohio will be certified LEED buildings, targeted at a Gold rating. In addition to these new certifications, Honda has two existing LEED-Gold buildings: Honda R&D America's central plant facility in Raymond, Ohio, and American Honda's Northwest Regional Center in Gresham Oregon. As well, Honda will seek to recertify its Gresham, Oregon, facility to LEED-EB (Existing Building) standards to ensure the facility continues to operate in an energy efficient manner. The Gresham facility was the first mixed-use industrial building in the country to earn LEED-Gold certification and continues to generate significant interest for its environmental leadership.

Both new facilities - the Acura Design Studio and the Midwest Consolidation Center - share common sustainable features such as:

-Energy Star highly reflective roof and dual-paned windows with low-emissive glass to reduce solar heat gain

-Extensive use of recycled and recyclable materials in the building envelope and interior

-Use of U.S. steel, guaranteed to contain at minimum 25 percent, and often as much as 90 percent, recycled content

-Energy-efficient light fixtures with motion sensors

-Diversion of construction waste from landfills to recycling centers

-Selection of suppliers based on their use of recycled content and their proximity to the job site.

The Acura Design Studio is also using water reclaimed from a nearby sewage treatment plant to flush toilets and irrigate the grounds, along with a high-efficiency displacement-type ventilation system that moves cool air from rooftop air conditioning units to large, floor-level grills, where it displaces heat from the human body. The 547,000 square-foot Midwest Consolidation Center has a mezzanine made from wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council as having come from sustainably-managed forest lands.

In the area of green factories, the company is working consistently and with widespread effort to reduce the environmental footprint of its 14 major manufacturing facilities operating in North America, including its five automobile assembly plants - in Ohio; Alabama; Alliston, Ontario; and El Salto, Mexico.

Ongoing efforts to conserve energy and more efficiently utilize production capacity have reduced CO2 emissions1 for each automobile produced in North America to a six-year low of 711 kilograms in FY2007, while energy use per auto produced was reduced to a seven-year low of 6.6 gigajoules.

Landfill waste from automobile production facilities has been reduced dramatically from 17.4 kilograms/auto in FY2001 to 5.9 kg/auto in FY2007, including several zero waste to landfill manufacturing facilities.

In FY2007, American Honda's Torrance, California, campus, which relies on an efficient natural-gas powered cogeneration unit to produce 10 percent of its energy, purchased 13.2 percent fewer kilowatt-hours of electricity from public utilities than in the previous year. In addition to green building and green factory activities, Honda is undertaking efforts to reduce the environmental impact of its products and operations in all business areas:

Home Heating Cogeneration Product
In the area of improved home-heating efficiency - in April of this year, Honda and technology partner Climate Energy LLC began retail sales in the Northeastern U.S. of a micro cogeneration combined heat and power (MCHP) system called freewatt