Mercury Marine receives international award recognizing excellence in energy management
Oct 26, 2021
At the Oct. 20, 2021, annual Association of Energy Engineers (AEE) International Awards Banquet, the association named Mercury Marine®, a division of Brunswick Corporation (NYSE: BC), as the recipient of its Corporate Energy Management Award. In conferring the honor, AEE asserted that “Mercury Marine is an environmental steward, driven by environmentally conscious production and sustainable energy management.”
Chris Drees, Mercury president, attended the event virtually and provided a recorded acceptance speech that aired during the live proceedings. The awards banquet was part of the 2021 AEE World Energy Conference and Expo, which began today and continues through Friday as both an in-personand virtual event. The annual conference brings together the world’s best minds in the field of energy engineering to discuss energy management, efficiency, automation, data analytics, policy, supply, procurement, sustainability and more.
“As a global manufacturer of marine engines and related technologies with more than $3 billion in annual revenue, Mercury takes its energy management very seriously,” Drees said in his acceptance remarks. “Our energy-conserving initiatives are critical in helping us meet both our financial and sustainability goals. We’re investing in solar arrays and other renewable energies, helping us derive no less than 50% of our company’s electricity from renewable sources by the end of 2030. To conserve energy, we are modernizing HVAC and compressed-air systems, installing more energy-efficient equipment, redirecting manufacturing-generated heat for multiple purposes and upgrading our facilities with more natural lighting and passive heating.”
In January, Mercury announced the second facility at which it completed installation of a rooftop solar array. The new array sits atop the company’s warehouse facility on its world-headquarters manufacturing campus in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. The array comprises 320 panels and will generate enough electricity to light the company’s warehouse operation in Fond du Lac for the next 30 years.
Mercury launched its first solar project in 2017 with the installation of a 2,000-panel array at the company’s European headquarters in Petit Rechain, Belgium. That solar array, combined with improved insulation at the location, reduces the amount of electricity the facility draws from the grid by 33%, thus lowering the facility’s utilities costs and enabling substantial use of clean and sustainable energy.
In announcing the second array earlier this year, Dress reinforced his company’s commitment to sustainable energy management. “These steps will combine with many others over the next 10 years to increase the proportion of energy we will draw from renewable sources,” Drees said. “We are committed to our focus on sustainable business practices, including investment in renewable energy and reduction of our carbon footprint. We will continue to elevate our commitment to sustainability across all of our global locations,” he said.
