How J&J, Suntory and Toyota cut industrial heat emissions

Pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson has dedicated as much as $40 million annually since 2005 to a carbon dioxide “relief fund” that has bankrolled hundreds of efficiency and retrofit projects at its facilities. 

That money helps fund low-carbon energy sources for J&J’s industrial equipment, such as a geothermal plant, inaugurated in 2023, that cut heating and cooling emissions at a Belgium manufacturing site by approximately 30 percent.

A caveat: The projects must also demonstrate a financial benefit. J&J reported in 2023 that its average internal rate of return for these investments is 17 percent.

“It’s a method to actually ensure that sites that may not be able to prioritize these projects can still find funding,” said DJ D’Agostino, senior manager of energy and sustainability operations at J&J, in February, during a GreenBiz 26 session about reducing emissions from industrial heat. 

J&J’s science-based emissions reduction target, which applies only to its operations (Scope 1) and electricity consumption (Scope 2), is to cut that footprint by 46 percent by 2030 based on a 2021 baseline year. The company recorded a 23 percent cut as of 2023, the latest year for which data is available. 

Convince engineers

Industrial heat applications account for an estimated 9 percent to 20 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, depending on the region. Reducing those emissions often requires deep retrofits and collaboration with factory designers and engineers who prioritize production quality, efficiency and costs. 

The majority of J&J’s remaining Scope 1 footprint comes from natural gas that the company uses in manufacturing processes, as is the case with Oatly, Suntory and Toyota, which also participated in the GreenBiz 26 session. 

The four companies use hot water and steam for a variety of applications, such as powering chemical reactions (J&J), sanitizing food processing equipment (Oatly), distilling spirits (Suntory) and curing automotive paint (Toyota). The temperatures needed for these processes is generally less than 200 degrees Celsius, or 392 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Most companies will find themselves juggling a two-fold approach: identifying opportunities to reduce natural gas consumption at existing sites while influencing design decisions during construction of new factories. The financial reality is that it’s difficult to justify the cost of a new boiler if a facility is only 10 years old, but sustainability teams can influence the design of new facilities and equipment chosen for processes.

“Obviously, I can make plans to replace it at the end of its useful life, but it’s not sustainable to replace a piece of equipment,” said Erin Augustine, vice president of global sustainability at Oatly. 

Engineer input is absolutely critical for new technology assessments, said Willie Overmann, carbon neutrality senior consultant at Toyota Motor North America. “When you change anything in the process, the people who are charged with the process get nervous.”

At one plant, the company considered using solar thermal technology to generate heat for its paint operation. The return on investment for the system made sense and Toyota had the space to support it, but the infrastructure retrofit needed — 1,000 feet of insulated pipe — basically tripled the cost of the project. 

“It’s something we didn’t even think would be a problem,” Overmann said. “So we’re thinking about these things and looking very case-by-case.”

Toyota’s sustainability team is managing a pipeline of 15 near-term projects intended to reduce the automaker’s natural gas consumption. Ideally, these investments will pay off within two years. If the financial return won’t be seen for five to 10 years, that project will be delayed. 

“You’ve got to come up with a business case, figure out who the other stakeholders are, and collaborate,” Overmann said. 

Make the most of waste

One of the quickest ways to reduce natural gas consumption is by recovering excess steam or hot water so that it can be used in other processes. This is Step 1 for every J&J decarbonization initiative, D’Agostino said.

“There’s no home run project, but we typically find that is a way to make progress,” he said. “We think of how we design this out of our processes.”

One of Suntory’s reduction projects was inspired by a parallel interest in reducing agricultural waste created during whiskey distilling processes in Boston, Kentucky. The company boosted its production capacity by 50 percent through anaerobic digesters that turn spent stillage from the grains used into biogas. The digesters also produce fertilizer that can be used by local farmers.

Suntory would have found it difficult to increase production at the factory without this project due to natural gas supply constraints, said Matthew Blandford, senior manager of climate and water at Suntory Global Spirits.

“It unlocks a new opportunity for us to expand, provides us a new source of renewable natural gas and it also helps us be a good partner in the community,” Blandford said.