Energy Saving and CO2 Reduction Concept at Lufthansa Technik AG Hamburg

Abstract

In September 2007, Lufthansa Technik (LHT) –together with eleven other industrial companies in Hamburg and the Hanseatic city’s environmental minister –signed a voluntary letter of intent to reduce its CO2 emissions. The goal of this letter of intent is to encourage these Hamburg-based companies to optimize (on a voluntary base) their plant technology and production processes by 2013 in such a way that their energy consumption and thus also their CO2 emissions will fall by more than 500,000 tons per year. Against this background, Lufthansa Technik has set itself the goal of reducing its current CO2 emissions of 70,000 tons per year by at least 30 percent by modernizing its buildings and making the energy use in infrastructure and manufacturing processes even more efficient. To reach this goal, the Executive Board of Lufthansa Technik gave the green light in October 2007 for a comprehensive CO2 reduction concept, which is also the basis for a long-term energy-efficiency strategy at the Hamburg location. The concept is based on four fundamental principles: •Avoiding waste of energy •Implementing efficient use of energy (the human factor) •To realize promising economic projects •To realize projects with financial support of the government By mid-2009, the energy consumption and the CO2 emissions could be reduced by nearly 16 %. The public measures the image and credibility of a company and especially Lufthansa by its efforts to reduce the emission of climate-relevant gases. Furthermore, demand for fossil fuels drives energy prices further and further up. Therefore, cutting back energy consumption is not only an ecological but also an economic necessity.