Global warming:

We aim to reduce or abate our products’ energy use, reduce our own emissions, and help reduce our customers’ emissions and high global warming gases (e.g. PFCs).

Reduce energy - Pump energy can be up to 50% of the total energy used by semiconductor tools. The global installed base of semiconductor vacuum pumps consumes the equivalent energy of Sheffield in the UK or Plano in Texas.

Edwards actions:

Edwards is a member of the May Day Network (chaired by HRH the Prince of Wales) - the UK’s largest group of businesses committed to taking action on climate change. By sharing best practice, these businesses promise to play a powerful role in reducing the UK's carbon emissions.

For all our new products we are looking to reduce energy use. For example the latest generation dry pumps use around 30% less energy than previously. We also advise customers how to minimise energy used by our equipment.

Reduce customers' emissions
Another aim is to help abate the emission of high global warming potential gases from our customers. They often deal with substances of high environmental concern due to their significant high global warming potential and persistence. For example:

If CO2 has a global warming potential (GWP) of 1, and lasts 50+ years

SF6 has a GWP of 16,300 and lasts 3200 years

NF3 has a GWP of 12.300 and lasts 12,300 years

CF4 has a GWP of 5,200 and lasts 50,000 years

Edwards actions:

We enable our customers to eliminate process emissions by using our range of abatement equipment. We supply a variety of systems suitable for all applications.

Reduce our emissions through action on solvents:
Our aim is to minimise the use of solvents, both in initial production and in re-manufacturing, and instead, install recycled water-based cleaning.

Hazardous waste going to landfill

We aim to reduce, the hazardous content of our products, and to reuse or recycle our products, as much as possible.

Edwards actions:

After use, many pumps used to be disposed of as hazardous waste. However, we now decontaminate and remanufacture used pumps to and as new condition and currently reuse 30,000 pumps each year. Vacuum pumps run 24/7 and are re-used 4-10 times over a 10-20 year lifetime! That’s equivalent to a car travelling around 2 million miles!

Reduce hazardous product content
Trace levels of heavy metals can leach out of landfill sites and many countries/regions such as the EU or China, are implementing tight legal restrictions.

Edwards actions:
At the very minimum our aim is to comply with the legal requirements, but in addition, we have voluntarily targeted the elimination of ‘RoHS 6’ chemicals from our scientific pumping range and our new semiconductor pumps during 2009.

So what then is Edwards carbon footprint?
An increasingly recognised way of measuring environmental impact is to calculate the 'carbon footprint’ for a product, organisation or individual. A carbon footprint converts all the various uses of materials, transport and energy by an organisation into an equivalent estimated amount of Carbon Dioxide (eCO2).

We calculate Edwards to be ‘carbon negative’.

Manufacturing, remanufacturing and product-use generate around two million tons CO2 equivalent each year. However, our abatement activities and products prevent the emission of around six million tons CO2 equivalent each year.

View Edwards carbon footprint

View a case study on Edwards carbon footprint published in Chemical Engineer magazine.

The 2009 Green Solar Manufacturing Award

Edwards Spectra Z 300 has been shortlisted for the 2009 Green Solar Manufacturing Award - for technology which reduces emissions or impacts positively on the environment during the solar manufacturing process.

Solar cell manufacturing is becoming increasingly important as an environmentally-friendly means of generating electrical power, and the growth of thin films of microcrystalline silicon will form a key part of this. The PECVD growth of this material poses a number of significant challenges regarding the treatment of the resultant exhaust gases, in terms of removing toxic, corrosive, global warming, and flammable gases safely, at low cost, whilst also minimising the environmental impact.

This award is one of the International Solar Technology Awards which are organised by a group of leading solar media, research organisations and industry associations.