One of the biggest arrays of solar panels in Belgium can be found up on the roof of our warehouse at TPCE. Installed in 2010, it extends to 80,000m2 – the size of more than seven football pitches – and captures enough energy from the sun to meet up to 20 per cent of the site’s electricity requirements.
We worked in close co-operation with specialist partner Blue Planet Solar NV, which financed and now operates the €7 million installation. The array is made up of 12,800 individual panels which together can produce a peak power of 1.84 megawatts and up to 1,620 megawatt-hours of electricity a year. That gives TPCE the potential to save 1,700 tonnes of CO2 from its power demands each year.
The performance of these panels contributes to the fact that all our facilities in Belgium have been 100% powered by green energy since 2007. This is in line with the targets we have set in the Toyota Environmental Challenge 2050 to cut the carbon emissions from our factories to zero.
TPCE’s excellent environmental management standards earned the centre ISO14001 certification in 2001. It also carries out a programme of green activities to build awareness among its workforce and improve the quality of its site, such as tree planting.