Green Investments – Company green washing or just decent behavior?
May 4, 2021
“One small step for a company, one giant leap towards green washing” are the famous first words of Neil Armstrong as he landed on our solar power plant that starts in May 2021. Whether you call it green washing or not, we at TT Gaskets are serious at taking our environment into concern.
Is it just tree hugging, or is there a reason?
After all, the Earth doesn’t need us humans to go around the Sun, but we humans do need the Earth and its resources to survive. So, why does some of us consider environmental friendliness as lame tree hugging then? We don’t know and we don’t care. But putting our ecosystem under unnecessary stress is seriously uncool.
Target acquired: Zero-Carbon TTG
The solar power plant project is humbly named as The First Step towards Carbon-neutral TT Gaskets. You guessed right; this is the first step in a continuously improving chain of events. It may have been called a leap, as we are taking steps each day to make our operations more sustainable and efficient. And of course, starting from the very beginning of our value chain, the material use, and recycling, through indoor and outdoor logistics and the end use of a gasket.
There’s plenty of green energy to spare
More about those and our Sustainable Development program later, let’s talk about the potential of solar energy. First to put things into perspective, the gas ball some 150 million kilometers away produces roughly 340 W/m² on the surface of the Earth. In total this means 3 400 000 EJ of energy annually, which is 7 000 times the amount of energy us humans use per year. Let’s call it tree hugging and green washing then.
Slovakia or Slovenia, who cares?
To cut a few corners, we would need to cover 1/7 000 of the Earth’s surface with solar panels to produce enough energy for our needs. The total surface area is 510 000 000 km² of which 70 % is water, meaning that there’s 149 000 000 km² to use. That’s roughly 72 000 km² of land mass to cover with solar panels. Or the whole Slovakia and Slovenia, to put into understandable measure.
Well, who needs Slovenia anyways? And Slovakia and Slovenia usually gets mixed up. Except that we at TT Gaskets do, and I personally love Slovenia as well. It’s like the best of Europe put into a small and lovable size. But enough rambling let’s get back to the point.
Going solar (and sustainable) is feasible even in Finland
The power plant we are currently building covers 10 % of our annual electricity use and covers 1/3 of our rooftop. Due to technical and safety reasons we cannot cover our roof with 100 % efficiency. It still proves that even in the void of darkness called Finland we can produce solar energy 8 months a year. During summer we even have over production as the Sun basically doesn’t set and we don’t usually work at night and during weekends.
Theoretically, we could thus produce 30 % of our electricity with solar energy. That’s not yet enough to reach zero-carbon emissions, but luckily there’s a couple of tricks up our sleeves some would again call green washing. But we don’t mind. We have started our caravan and the dogs can bark as much as they want. Whether you bark or not, you can join us in the sustainable journey towards Smarter and Safer Tomorrow.
