Through its DTE Energy Partnership program, Detroit Edison has helped Ford Motor Company increase energy efficiency at its North American operations by 30 percent since 2000 and reduce CO2 emissions by more than 15 percent. These achievements helped Ford earn the coveted Energy Star 2007 Partner of the Year Award in Energy Management from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Energy for the third consecutive year.
Since 1995, DTE Energy Partnership has assigned engineers to work with the Ford Land Energy Program team to identify opportunities and implement solutions to save energy. The engineers - all of whom are AEE (Association of Energy Engineers) Certified Energy Managers - work full time at Ford facilities.
Our Energy Partnership initiatives have included:
- Capital investment and performance contracting projects
- Program initiatives to optimize facility operations
- Engineering review of new technologies and cascading of "Best Practices"
- Energy surveys, audits and customized energy efficiency plans
- Lighting system evaluations, including design and project engineering
- Compressed air system evaluations and development of a leak repair program
- Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems evaluation and development of optimization plans
- Implementing utility metering and monitoring systems for trend analysis
- Chilled- and process-water system analysis and design enhancements
- Employee energy awareness programs
- Paint Shop abatement process and control
Fumes to Fuel -- new energy, cleaner air!
- Nearly 70 million pounds of paint fumes are incinerated by automakers annually
- Each plant has several incinerators that consume about 350 kilowatts of energy per machine
DTE Energy and Ford Motor Co. have joined forces to develop a fumes-to-fuel system that captures paint solvent vapors and converts them into electrical power.
The paint solvent vapors or VOCs (volatile organic compounds) in paint booth exhaust air - an automotive plant's largest source of CO2 emissions - are captured through a patented process. Using fuel cells and combustion engines, Ford uses this hydrocarbon-rich exhaust to generate electricity for other plant processes.
The fumes-to-fuel concept was first tested in 2004 at Ford's Rouge industrial complex in Dearborn, MI. That effort earned Detroit Edison and Ford the EPA's 2004 Clean Air Award. The following two-year pilot program at Ford's Michigan Truck Plant allowed the company to successfully test the process on a production scale.
