As the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is being held in Glasgow, UK, major industries like energy and industrial manufacturing, to name a few, are pressing ahead with their low carbon transition. As a world-leading supplier of automation technology, Festo has been committed to climate protection and carbon footprint optimization for long.
On November 4, Grid connection is successfully completed for the Phase I of the PV Power Generation Project located in the Festo Jinan Global Production Center. With an installed capacity of 4.2 MW, the Phase I of the Project will generate about 5 million kWh of electricity per year and reduce about 4,000 tons of CO2 emissions annually. Besides deep intelligence, this huge manufacturing "engine" located in China will operate in a green and low-carbon manner. In the future, the scale of the PV Project will be further expanded.
Festo has already taken action in all aspects such as product development, packaging, transportation and the products, solutions and services delivered to customers to contribute to climate protection and carbon neutrality.
Reaching out to Local Markets
The Jinan Global Production Center was established in order to provide more reliable delivery services and more competitive products to customers in China and the Asia-Pacific region, and to reduce carbon emissions generated during the delivery and transportation process. With a total planned area of about 430,000 square meters, the plant is equipped with such core areas as intelligent production workshop, automatic logistics center and dual system training center.
Delving into sustainable development, the Jinan Global Production Center has implemented measures such as rainwater recycling and gray water reuse and heat recovery, and has achieved recycling of more than 80% of outer packaging to reduce resource waste.
Customized Solutions with Industry Insights
While deeply engaged in automation technology, Festo also focuses on how to use its expertise to target the application needs of niche sectors, covering automotive, new energy, food, life science, and water treatment, to create an efficient, energy-saving and low-carbon production environment.
Based on the characteristics of niche sectors, Festo not only offers a wide range of pneumatic, electro-driven and digital products, but also develops targeted and customized solutions to precisely "solve" production pain points, improve productivity and reduce carbon emissions. Energy-Saving Services and Energy-Efficiency Management Optimizing compressed air utilization in automated production can indirectly reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the production process. To further tap into the energy-saving potential of automated production, Festo boasts a wide range of energy-saving modules and TÜV-certified energy-saving services that can save up to 60% of energy consumption.
In addition, Festo offers digital engineering software for the selection phase, enabling quick decision-making by predicting and comparing key values such as carbon emissions, energy consumption, procurement costs and total cost of ownership for the use of different products in actual production in advance.
Artificial Intelligence and Cloud-Based Connectivity
Looking to the future of digital production, artificial intelligence and machine learning should not be overlooked. In view of this, Festo has created the Automation Technology Experience (Festo AX), seeking to extract maximum value from system data for predictive maintenance, predictive energy management and predictive quality management.
Predictive energy management minimizes energy consumption in the production process by analyzing production data and monitoring operational parameters. Artificial intelligence is employed to monitor and predict changes in production status, thus further improving the level of intelligence and firmly steering the energy-saving and low-carbon production pace.