* The cooling and heating system at Sony Semiconductor Kyushu Corporation's Kumamoto Technology Center earns the highest rating under Japanese efficiency standards
(COP 7.5; annual performance as of May 2008, based on Sony data)

Avant-garde industrial art? Shoddy construction? Actually, these oddly twisting and turning pipes are neither. They're an example of our meticulous approach to energy-efficient facilities. Welcome to Sony Semiconductor Kyushu Corporation's Kumamoto Technology Center, which produces CCDs, CMOS sensors, and other imaging devices in Cyber-shot digital still cameras and α (alpha) digital SLRs. Semiconductor component plants such as this one consume great amounts of energy to maintain clean rooms.

Here, production of fine circuits on the scale of nanometers (a million times smaller than a millimeter) on silicon wafers demands strict control of temperature and humidity. This plant controls the temperature and humidity through separate lines of cool and hot water, and devising an energy-efficient cooling and heating system was our biggest challenge when designing the facility. With future energy needs in mind at the construction stage, we set out to build a superefficient plant.
The first step was seeking the most efficient equipment available, including chiller, pumps, and boilers. This required special orders to equipment manufacturers, and some units were even developed jointly with them. But we were not content merely to install the latest energy-saving equipment. This would not meet our very high standards for the overall efficiency of the plant. That's why we applied decades of expertise from our other plants to build the system to control all of this equipment for optimal energy efficiency.

All equipment at the plant is designed for maximum performance under minimal energy requirements. To achieve this, each unit is controlled by an inverter, regulated by a cooling and heating controller jointly developed by Sony and our partner.

This affords an exceptional level of control. System operators can avoid wasting the energy to supply hot or cool water in response to temperature fluctuations outside. Exhaust heat can be recovered and reused. In all respects, no energy is wasted. Even the gentle curves in the pipes shown here are carefully designed. Reduced fluid resistance in the pipes allows the pump motors to run at lower speeds.

Since this carefully planned facility was completed , it has shown an impressive record in regards to CO₂ emissions, which are about 83% lower than those in typical fuel−an achievement that earned the 2007 Nikkei Manufacturing Grand Prize. This energy-efficient technology is now being introduced at the main Sony office building in Tokyo, at our Chinese plants, and at other sites around the world.
But successfully building an efficient plant does not mean our efforts are finished. In routine management and maintenance, we are constantly refining the system to keep the equipment running at optimal capacity and maintain a high level of performance. We know that even modest gains in energy efficiency can add up and make a big difference at plants that consume a lot of energy.
The Sony vision of a greener future is well underway.