2010 Sustainability Report - Cummins.com

Cummins employees embrace “envolvement”
Cummins employees are working to reduce their
carbon footprint both at work and at home.
What started as a voluntary commitment to the EPA to
reduce greenhouse gases in 2006 has led to a series
of initiatives to improve energy efficiency that depend
on the skill and passion of Cummins employees.
Two successful Unplugged Challenge campaigns
to keep energy use to a minimum over site holiday
shutdowns at the end of 2008 and 2009 saved a
combined 1,900 tons of greenhouse gases from
being emitted and $1.2 million.
Smart capital expenditures on energy efficiency
projects have yielded excellent returns, but in a tough
economic climate, Cummins has excelled in creating
a culture of energy champions to do low or no cost
energy improvements.
The Company now has 85 trained Energy
Champions and their deputies who provide leadership,
coaching and mentoring on energy efficiency to site
Energy Leaders. The Energy Leaders are the energy
experts at their particular locations.
In addition, Cummins leaders have been on the road,
talking personally to employees about the Company’s
many opportunities to improve energy efficiency both
at its facilities and in its products.
Tower conserves millions of gallons of water
Cummins is no longer discharging
millions of gallons of water used to cool
the Company’s corporate headquarters into
a Columbus, Ind. waterway.
The Corporate Office Building (COB) occupies
three city blocks and can hold about 1,000 workers.
When the building was completed in 1982, three
ground water wells were installed around the
perimeter of the building.
The extracted groundwater was circulated through
the building’s heating and cooling system to
support the three chillers for air conditioning.
The original plan to re-inject the ground water
back into the aquifer failed, but since there was
no cooling tower to conserve and re-circulate the
water, the water was redirected to a storm sewer
that empties into a nearby river.
This solution was far from ideal. Not only did it
use a lot of water, it took a lot of time and effort to
monitor the discharges to meet the requirements
of the site’s discharge permit. In addition, the
well water caused the air conditioning system’s
mechanical equipment to deteriorate more quickly.
Cummins officials considered building a tower
several times, but cost and design challenges
proved too much to overcome until a more
aesthetically pleasing tower design was suggested.
The tower was completed in May of 2009 – 27 years
after the COB opened. The wells have been closed
and no more ground water – an estimated 22 million
gallons per month – is being discharged to the river.
Cummins is now purchasing water from the city
of Columbus to cool the COB, and that water is recirculated,
reducing volumes significantly. With the
new cooling tower, water use is on pace to being
reduced to an average of 500,000 gallons per month.
44 Cummins Inc. Sustainability Report 2010