The Mitsubishi Electric Corporation announced plans to expand its businesses that help battle climate change, while BP said it’s focusing future wind power investments on the U.S.
The announcements from the global engineering and energy giants came within days of the U.S. presidential election.
Mitsubishi’s plans involve ambitious new sales goals for solar power and heat pump systems and energy efficient power devices. The company said it intends to achieve sales of 1,300 billion yen (about $13.3 billion) in its fiscal year that ends March 31, 2016. Hitting that target would reduce CO2 emissions by more than 5.1 tons during the same period, the firm said.
Mitsubishi’s plans follow its Environmental Vision 2021, a framework announced in October 2007 that includes pledges to reduce CO2 emissions from product use by 30 percent and to help fuel the expansion of power generation that does not emit CO2. The company chose the target year to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the firm’s founding.
While Mitsubishi was announcing its plans to broaden its cleantech business, BP said it will redirect its wind power focus on the U.S., where President-elect Barack Obama has promised investment of $150 billion in advanced energy technology over the next 10 years.
In the United Kingdom, BP’s shift means it is withdrawing from bidding for the country’s first carbon capture and storage, or CCS, project and that it will not build a small-scale wind farm on the Isle of Grain.
BP was one of four firms short-listed as bidders for the CCS project and had been exploring the wind farm concept in Kent.