The Volkswagen Group expects to increase its energy efficiency, saving 9.26 million kilowatt hours annually, by replacing its office equipment with fewer energy-efficient lines, reports Autoblog Green. The four-year project, completed last year, has enabled the company to reduce its energy requirements for office equipment by 86 percent compared to 2005 levels. The savings achieved are equivalent to electricity demand for about 1,400 households.
Volkswagen replaced more than 52,000 fax machines, printers, photocopiers and scanners with less than 17,500 multifunction devices throughout the group, and integrated them into a unified IT infrastructure. The auto maker replaced 832 different models of office equipment with seven energy-efficient standard devices, which eliminated 35,000 single machines.
In addition to the energy savings, the new devices yield maintenance and repair benefits. Since the equipment automatically report problems and toner levels to a service center, maintenance is performed as needed; storage of consumables onsite is eliminated and toner cartridges are changed in an environmentally-friendly way.
A survey reveals that 72 percent of office staff view the conversion as positive, 81 percent said they value the reliability of the devices and 94 percent said they value the quality of the printing, scanning and copying results.
Volkswagen is also tackling energy efficiency at its new $1 billion Chattanooga, Tenn., manufacturing plant. In January, the Volkswagen Group of America received $150 million in tax credits under the clean energy stimulus bill.