With more companies aiming for carbon neutrality to address the problem of climate change, Toyota Motor Philippines recently held the inauguration of the expansion of its solar array at TMP headquarters in Santa Rosa, Laguna.

Back in 2015, Toyota Motor Corporation launched the Toyota Environmental Challenge (TEC 2050), which set six challenges to achieve a net positive environmental impact by 2050 for all global affiliates. Last year, TMC announced its acceleration with an earlier target of 2035.

The third step is the Plant Zero CO₂ Emissions Challenge. To achieve this, TMP plans to increase renewable energy utilization along with plant efficiency.

In 2019, TMP successfully installed a 1MW solar array in its Santa Rosa plant where the Vios and the Innova are locally manufactured. By investing P60 million in 2,640 solar panels, 1,300,000kWh is produced annually with a carbon-dioxide reduction of 947 tons.

This phase was done in collaboration with the Japanese government where it was registered as a joint crediting mechanism model project. By subsidizing low-carbon infrastructure in developing countries, Japan, in return, gets to use the carbon credits to reduce its emission reduction target.

For this year, TMP partnered with Spectrum, a solar power company by Meralco, to introduce 846 solar panels with an additional capacity of 0.46MW. This increases energy production to a combined total of 2,000,000kWh annually with 1,400 tons of carbon-dioxide reduction.

In 2021, TMP tackled the pillar of energy efficiency by changing the production boiler fuel from diesel to LPG to lessen emissions with plans to introduce smart technologies and advanced manufacturing systems to increase efficiency.

“For TMP, I am confident to say that plant carbon neutrality by 2035 is possible,” said TMP president Atsuhiro Okamoto. “Our Environmental Management Committee devised a road map, which is being implemented through the two pillars of RE utilization, and energy efficiency. Our global vision may be ambitious, but we will continue to challenge ourselves to ‘move our world’ by creating a net positive impact and a more sustainable society for future generations.”

The second phase of TMP’s solar array began installation in March this year, and now that it has been inaugurated, the full operation will begin by the first week of July.