Mercedes 2008 Annual Report Download - page 66

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€2.3 billion for environmental protection. We pursue the
goal of preserving resources and reducing all relevant emissions.
We therefore consider the effects of all our processes – from
vehicle development to production and to recycling and environ-
mentally friendly disposal. In the year 2008, we spent €2.3 billion
on environmental protection (2007: €1.8 billion).
Extensive activities for environmental protection in produc-
tion. With the help of environmentally friendly production met-
hods, we have succeeded in recent years in continually reducing
our plants’ CO2emissions, production-related solvent emissions
and noise pollution. With a comparable production volume, energy
consumption fell compared with 2005 by 3.1% to 10.4 million
megawatt hours. During the same period, CO2emissions decreased
by 3.5% to approximately 3.6 million tons as a result of the
slightly lower share of electricity in our total energy consumption.
Utilization of techniques that conserve resources, including
closed-cycle systems, enabled us to reduce water consumption
by 2.2% between 2005 and 2008.
In the area of waste management, our guiding principle is that
avoiding and recycling is better than disposal. Innovative techniques
and environmentally compatible production planning allow us
to steadily reduce our volumes of waste materials. Between 2005
and 2008, the annual total of production-related waste material
fell by 4.1% to 1.1 million tons. The figures stated are based on an
extrapolation of the environmental figures currently available
for 2008. The exact figures will be released with the publication of
our new sustainability report in April 2009. We apply compre-
hensive environmental management systems in our efforts to make
further progress in the field of environmental protection. More
than 95% of our employees worldwide work in plants whose envi-
ronmental management systems have been certified according
to the ISO 14001 or EMAS environmental standards.
Successful measures for the reduction of CO2emissions.
We have reduced the CO2emissions of our passenger cars sold in
Europe by approximately 23% since 1995 – a reduction nearly
50% better than the average for European manufacturers. In Ger-
many, we have reduced the fleet consumption of our passenger
cars by approximately 32% since 1990. And in the past 15 years,
we have reduced the overall emissions of pollutants by our
cars by 70%; for some models the percentage is actually far higher.
Emissions of particulate matter have fallen by more than 95%.
We are global leaders for clean diesel engines with our BLUETEC
technology. Our BLUETEC automobiles fulfill the strictest emis-
sion standards and are the cleanest diesel cars in the world. In
the context of our “Road to the Future” strategy, in 2008 we
started to launch our Mercedes-Benz “BlueEFFICIENCY” models,
which achieve fuel savings of up to 12%. Many of our BLUETEC
trucks already fulfill the strict Euro 5 limits that come into force in
October 2009. Since market launch in the year 2005, Mercedes-
Benz has sold well over 200,000 BLUETEC trucks. The Mercedes-
Benz Actros is the world’s most fuel-efficient series-produced
truck with consumption of 19.44 liters of diesel per 100 kilometers.
Hybrid technology has a key role to play for commercial vehicles,
and can reduce diesel consumption by up to 30%. By December
2008, we had delivered to customers 1,700 Orion hybrid buses,
nearly 200 Freightliner vans and trucks with hybrid drive and more
than 500 trucks and buses from Mitsubishi Fuso with hybrid
technology. We have received orders for another 1,100 hybrid
buses (see page 106).
Amounts in millions of € % change
Research and development expenditure
+7
+40
+10
+50
+1
+15
+7
-50
4,148
990
2,733
705
1,047
283
368
2
4,442
1,387
2,994
1,060
1,056
326
392
1
2008 08/072007
Daimler Group
thereof capitalized
Mercedes-Benz Cars
thereof capitalized
Daimler Trucks
thereof capitalized
Vans, Buses, Other
thereof capitalized