In 2024, Better Climate Challenge and Better Plants Challenge Goal Achiever General Motors received a Better Project Award for decarbonization advances made at its Fort Wayne Assembly Plant. DOE visited the plant to recognize GM for its decarbonization achievements and leadership and to learn more about its plans to expand these activities across its portfolio.
Opened in 1986 and covering 4.6 million square feet, the Fort Wayne Assembly Plant builds Chevrolet and GMC trucks. With Fort Wayne’s cold winters and hot summers, the plant faces significant energy use and associated costs to heat and cool the plant. The GM team saw an opportunity to innovate the plant’s steam system into a more efficient solution. Dennys Pimenta, plant executive director, kicked off the event and spoke about the history of efficiency improvements at the Fort Wayne plant.
As a Better Plants partner for over a decade, GM has reduced its energy intensity across 33 plants by more than 25%, reduced its emissions across more than 82 million square feet by 55%, and achieved its 90% waste diversion goal. The organization is now pursuing a water efficiency goal and a secondary energy efficiency goal. Kathi Walker, director of global sustainability for GM, shared remarks about GM’s commitment to sustainability across its portfolio.
GM’s solution was to transition from a large, natural gas-fired steam system to a combined heat and power system, which uses heat exchangers to recover waste heat from pre-existing landfill gas powered generators onsite. This recovered heat is sufficient to provide more than 80% of the site’s building heating needs while reducing natural gas usage onsite. James Heist, manufacturing engineering manager, discussed operations and decarbonization work at the plant.
After remarks, DOE and GM leadership toured the plant, led by Site Utility Manager Robert “Jeb” Billings. The first stop featured the COGEN plant, which creates up to 30% of the electricity used at the plant with landfill gas-powered generators. This system creates the heat utilized in the heat capture to reduce natural gas usage in the winter and electricity used for cooling in the summer.
Next up were the heat exchangers and the heat recovery pad, which transfer the heat from the COGEN engine exhaust and water-cooling system into the plant heating and cooling load, thus reducing the amount of natural gas to heat the plant and electricity to cool the plant.
The last stop was the absorption chiller and boiler area. This system uses hot water created by the COGEN heat capture system to pre-cool water before the main chiller system, which reduces the energy needed to keep the plant cool. On days above ~20 degrees F, the plant’s boiler system doesn’t need to fire due to this COGEN heat capture system, saving natural gas and its associated emissions.
Visit the combined heat and power hub of the Better Buildings Solution Center for more information and resources on cogeneration. Learn more about the Better Climate Challenge here.