Epson Switches to 100% Renewable Electricity at All Sites in Japan

On November 1 this year, Seiko Epson Corporation became the first company in the Japanese manufacturing industry to convert to 100% renewable electricity for all its domestic sites. Equating to 530 GWh annually, Epson is reducing its annual carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 250,000 tonnes. 

With global interest in societal issues involving the environment and energy, Epson has established and is pursuing a new long-term environmental management policy -Environmental Vision 2050. Epson has now positioned renewable electricity use as a priority action in its 2025 Science Based Targets achievement scenario to achieve the decarbonisation goal set at the Paris Agreement. In March 2021, Epson announced that all global Epson Group sites would meet their entire energy needs with 100% renewable electricity by 2023. Thus, the Epson Group can eliminate approximately 350,000 tons of carbon dioxide from its global electricity production every year. 
 
They had planned to convert to renewable electricity at all its domestic sites by the end of the 2021 fiscal year (ending March 2022). Still, They will now achieve this ahead of schedule, transitioning to 100% renewable electricity for the entire Group's power needs. As a result, Epson forecasts it can meet approximately 40% of the Group's total annual electricity needs with renewable electricity in the 2021 fiscal year. 

Epson's Environmental Vision 2050 states that they seek to become carbon negative and underground resource free. The company will invest approximately 100 billion yen in decarbonisation, closing the resource loop, and environmental technology development over the next ten years to 2030. Furthermore, they intend to focus most of their management resources on developing products and services that help reduce environmental impacts and reduce its customers' environmental effects. 

 
By converting to renewable electricity earlier than scheduled, Epson has achieved its own environmental targets and helps to encourage the spread of renewable electricity in society.