Cutting oil as underfloor heating

Since the beginning in 1974 up to today, Gnosjö Automatsvarvning has gradually reduced its carbon dioxide emissions generated by energy for machinery and heating of premises.

Reduced electricity consumption for heating

In 1995 the company moved to new premises which involved a number of radical changes. We created an in-house designed system for heat recovery of cutting oils which reduced the need for electricity for heating threefold. Heat recovery of exhaust air was also introduced which reduced the electricity consumption for heating by 1.5 to 2 times.

Did away with 6,500 litres of oil

The next step was in 2001 when our geothermal heating got underway. We extract heat from deeply drilled holes which is then transferred to the factory. This meant that we could do away with the consumption of almost 6,500 litres of oil each year.

Today our own produced electricity from partly owned wind turbines and solar cells on the factory roof represent an even greater proportion of our electricity consumption. In the past four years approximately 90 per cent of electricity has been produced by wind power and approximately 10 per cent by the panels.

In the diagram above we have compared the carbon dioxide emissions from Swedish industries between 2001 and 2019*. To put this in relation to economic development, we divide the values for the Swedish gross national product by the number of inhabitants (per capita), a common expression for “how Sweden is doing”.

We therefore take carbon dioxide emissions from industry divided by the economic development for Sweden. For Gnosjö Automatsvarvning, this corresponds to a value for carbon dioxide emissions from oil and electricity divided by the value of what we produced in the current year, the value called Produced sales. Because we’re just one company, it is clearly visible when we change something.

An enormous reduction in carbon dioxide emissions took place in 2001 when we switched from oil to geothermal energy. To make the figures comparable, we include the change between years in the table. Since 2001 Sweden has reduced its emissions at a stable rate and in 2018 they were 41 per cent lower than in 2001.

Gnosjö Automatsvarvning’s emissions reduced sharply between 2001 and 2002, and since then carbon dioxide emissions have reduced by almost 100 per cent, to which own produced solar and wind from recent years has  contributed, among other things.