We know our customers want to conserve resources and reduce their carbon footprint. And we know that many countries have committed to ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 80 percent by 2050.
Around the world, we're helping to make this happen.
Our products help to increase the amount of green power on the grid, as well as the efficient flow and use of that power. Our solutions help to reduce pollutants in the air we breathe and greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. We manufacture a variety of components for utility-scale renewable power generation, including proportional valves used in hydropower dams, wind turbines and concentrated solar power systems. Our microgrid technology optimizes energy resiliency and independence by integrating electrical power from multiple distributed generation sources, including generators, solar, wind and energy storage. Whether operating in parallel with the grid or as a standalone electrical power system, microgrids help to maintain system stability, shave peak demand and shift loads.
Today, more manufacturers are utilizing liquid cooling because it transfers heat far more efficiently than air, thus helping to ensure the safe and effective operation of system components at stable temperatures. In 2018, we launched our new aluminum flat face couplings, which are designed for high vibration and heat environments, such as the electrical component cabinets in wind turbines and solar plants. These couplings complement our existing thermal management coupling and other fluid conveyance products. This portfolio is specially designed to reduced maintenance, improved uptime and greater cooling effectiveness in the most challenging applications.
In wind turbine applications, Eaton power units, along with control valves and hydraulic cylinders, optimize the pitch angle of turbine blades, and thereby power production, while limiting loads on the turbine structure. Our hydraulic disc and caliper brakes bring the turbine to a safe and complete stop.
Our hydraulic valve and hose technology are used at large concentrated solar power plants to angle solar panels to track the sun. Using hydraulics as the drive and positioning technology allows for precise, small and frequent movements under extreme conditions, including wind and dust.
Between today and 2030, there will be nearly 2 billion vehicles on the road, and the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that 125 million of these will be electric. Our eMobility business, launched in 2018, is producing technologies for electric, hybrid and fuel cell commercial vehicles. Whether it’s a long-haul truck traversing the highway, a delivery vehicle making frequent stops or a bus moving commuters across a busy metropolis, we’re developing new technologies that improve efficiency and safety—without sacrificing performance. At the same time, we recognize that the vast majority of vehicles will still rely on internal combustion engines, so we remain dedicated to reducing tailpipe emissions, such as nitrous oxide, and decreasing fuel consumption for these vehicles.
We design components that help electric vehicles be more efficient, with longer battery life and range. As voltage rates increase in EVs, our power protection components help make them safer. And we make EVs more intelligent by connecting with systems and providing data that help original equipment manufacturers both improve overall vehicle power balance and communicate with end-users, notifying them of what’s going on with their vehicle.
In addition to our role in vehicle electrification, our products make internal combustion engines more efficient. Examples include our diesel cylinder deactivation and variable valve actuation technologies. Both technologies can be used to reduce fuel consumption between 5 and 25 percent. Another technology is our TVS EGR pump, which is designed to save fuel while meeting new global emission regulations. Our joint venture with Cummins, Eaton Cummins Automated Transmission Technologies, has developed the Procision dual-clutch transmission, an efficient design that delivers up to eight percent better fuel economy than a competitive torque converter automatic transmission. It also has a lube change interval that is three times longer than competing products (150,000 miles vs. 50,000 miles).
By 2050, the world’s population will exceed 9.8 billion — placing increased pressure on already insufficient food production and water resources. Our products and solutions enable machinery to boost agricultural productivity, increase harvest equipment efficiency and improve crop yield. We also make self-cleaning and mechanically cleaned filters to remove sediment and other suspended solids commonly found in surface and ground water. Water quality agencies and industry rely on these filters, helping them meet their watershed protection obligations and protect public health.
Using IoT technologies, our hydraulic solutions reduce fuel use by 10 to 15 percent in sugarcane harvesters while enhancing productivity and lowering operating costs. The harvesters leverage our onboard software that allows the machine to take input commands, interpret data from sensors and respond quickly. Data analytics provide real-time vehicle control and performance, helping to improve equipment availability, reduce yield loss and optimize harvesting efficiency.
Handprinting is a relatively new concept developed to measure the benefits of actions taken in an organization’s indirect control, or completely outside of it. As part of our collaboration with the MIT Sustainability and Health Initiative for Net Positive Enterprise (SHINE), we developed an initial handprint tool to calculate the reduction in carbon emissions from new products that our customers use compared to existing products for the same purpose.
The most accurate way of quantifying the positive impact of our products on decarbonization is by conducting a comparative life cycle assessment for each of our innovative new products against an alternative, taking into account the specific application and usage scenario for each product sold. The handprint calculator simplifies assumptions and generic data for some life cycle phases, while increasing context-specific data in the use phase, providing an increased fidelity.
The calculator also acts as a first-screening tool for identifying improvement opportunities, discovering areas for deeper investigation where more accurate modeling is needed and helping create awareness around life cycle thinking for our product development engineers. The output from the tool will help us measure and steer our innovation portfolio toward being net positive on carbon. The calculator is currently undergoing detailed piloting on our innovation portfolio before formal integration into our new product introduction process.
While a traditional full life cycle assessment would take several hundreds of hours to complete for one product, our handprint tool provides an assessment in a few hours. This is very important to us as we engage with our customers on the environmental benefits of our products and inform other stakeholders of such benefits.
Eaton became a partner in the Sustainability & Health Initiative for NetPositive Enterprise (SHINE).
