Bangalore Production Site Achieves 100% Renewable Power Supply
The Sartorius manufacturing site in Bangalore, India, has taken a major step toward reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and switching to zero-emission energy from renewable resources.
This article is posted on Sartorius Blog.
Sartorius aims to eliminate all GHG emissions from purchased electricity, steam, heating and cooling by 2030. One of the initiatives to reduce the company’s carbon footprint recently came to a success: The team in Bangalore, India, where nearly 700 employees manufacture solutions for the biopharma industry, has already achieved its interim goal of becoming CO2e-neutral with regard to its electricity supply.
Production Powered by Solar Energy
As a first step, in 2022, the team took advantage of the sunny conditions in the southwestern region of the Indian subcontinent: With approximately 6.5 hours of sunshine per day, the location is ideal for solar power generation. By comparison, the average number of hours of sunshine per day at the Sartorius headquarters in Göttingen, Germany, is about 1.4.
The local team installed nearly 1,500 solar modules on a 6,000-square-meter area on the roof of the production building. Since mid-July 2022, they have been generating around 50% of the electricity used in the production processes.
As a result, by the end of last year, the site had already reduced its emissions by around one third, saving approximately 700 tons of CO2 per year, while at the same time becoming less dependent on purchased electricity.
Supply of Renewable Energy
Recently, the team went one step further by signing a Power Purchase Agreement with the Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (BESCOM) to convert its purchased power supply from conventional to renewable energy. Under the agreement, the government-owned utility in Karnataka will supply green power to Sartorius. This will cover an additional 50% of the site’s power consumption.
With both initiatives in place, 100% of the site’s electricity and 70% of its total energy consumption now comes from renewable sources, supporting the company’s climate target of eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from purchased electricity, steam, heat, and cooling.
