Charting the path to sustainable manufacturing: the Mission to Zero™ factory in Contagem

The challenge facing ABB’s Belo Horizonte site in Contagem, south-east Brazil, was how to transform a 50-year-old factory into a beacon for sustainability. This is how the workforce set about making it run leaner and cleaner.

For the past five years, ABB has been on a journey to achieving net zero emissions by 2050, driven by its own Mission to Zero™ program.

Mission to Zero™  is designed to “solve sustainability from the inside out”, by bringing together technologies using digital solutions and renewable energy, to increase efficiency and reduce emissions.

The scalable blueprint to help industries run leaner and cleaner has been rolled out across 20 ABB facilities since 2019, and the 8,000m² Belo plant in Contagem, southeast Brazil, was one of six ABB sites to be recognized for its sustainability achievements during 2024.

Collectively, they support ABB’s commitment to reduce Scope 1 and Scope 2 GHG emissions by 100% by 2050 (compared to 2019).

Energy efficiency from the inside-out

As with sister ABB Mission to Zero™ sites, Belo, which makes poles for use in NEMA residential circuit breakers, had to develop a roadmap to net zero operations, then apply ABB and third-party solutions to enable greater electrification, efficiency and use of renewable energy.

Measures adopted to accelerate energy efficiency include the installation of:

• New energy frequency inverters
• Solar panels
• Solar water heaters
• LED lamps and skylights
• ABB Ability™ smart energy management

Together, these resulted in annual energy savings of 530MWh and a reduction of 160 tons of CO₂e emissions*. More simply, each circuit-breaker is now manufactured with one-third less energy than previously used.

_{*Compared to 2021 baseline}

A “game-changer” for energy management

For operations manager Roni Silva, who has overseen the Mission to Zero™ project, the integration of ABB Ability™ Energy Manager to control and optimize energy consumption was “a game-changer”.

The latest savings build on a CO₂e emissions reduction of more than 128 tons in 2023, from green energy purchases. A further 34 tons were saved following the installation of solar panels, upgraded heating, ventilation and air-conditioning and enhanced frequency inverters in production lines.

The solar panels are estimated to contribute 220 MWh of site-generated renewable energy per year.

None of these savings, however, would have been possible without the commitment of Belo’s workforce.

ABB’s Belo workforce has targeted further energy savings in 2024 by adding more solar panels to meet 30 percent of the site’s energy demand as well as installing inverters for compressor and pump machines and replacing existing forklift vehicles with electric ones.

Discover the top five ways to make your operations more sustainable, with this guide.

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