Lenovo Boosts Sustainability Efforts in Hungary

Lenovo has unveiled new solar panels at its in-house manufacturing facility in Budapest, Hungary. The company’s newest Global Innovation Center, unveiled in October 2023 and operating on-site at the facility, now has the capacity for customers to test HPC workloads on 100% solar energy.

The manufacturing facility in Budapest was built from the ground up with sustainability in mind and the new solar panels bring the total solar energy capacity onsite up to 3 megawatts (MW). The completed installation, now totaling 5,072 solar panels across two buildings, forms part of an ambitious global plan to reduce Lenovo’s Scope 2 emissions by expanding the use of solar energy worldwide, with 17MW of solar electricity currently operational, and Lenovo investigating additional opportunities for solar installations in Brazil, Mexico, and China.

“With the focus on sustainability efforts a prominent part of the executive suite’s decision-making process, we see customers making significant shifts in their purchasing behavior towards being more sustainable. From our supply chain to our services, we offer customers significant support when it comes to helping them reach their sustainability goals. European customers are now able to test HPC proof of concepts in our innovation centre which can be run off 100% renewable energy. They can then have their systems manufactured in a more sustainable factory and shipped within the region using more sustainable modes of transport and bulk packaging services, collectively helping to minimize freight miles and emissions.” said Stefan Brechling Larsen, Global Sustainability Services Engagement Leader at Lenovo.

Also on-site in Hungary is Lenovo’s Value Recovery Service European facility where the company equipment is returned, refurbished, and recertified as a sustainability service to support a more circular economy that helps to reduce e-waste and enables the purchase of enterprise hardware at an affordable price. The facility in Budapest has implemented many sustainability measures including boosting heating isolation, adding new lighting sensors, and reusing heat from air compressors. The heat from the production house is used to keep the manufacturing space warm, while in winter, cold outside air is used for cooling, which helps reduce energy costs.

The physical manufacturing of Lenovo solutions on-site is done using the patented Low-Temperature Solder (LTS) process that was developed by Lenovo in 2017. With LTS, soldering heat is applied at maximum temperatures of 180 degrees Celsius, a reduction of 70 degrees from the previous method resulting in reduced carbon emissions during manufacturing. Beyond the processes, Lenovo also helps mitigate its employees’ environmental impact by offering factory workers a free shuttle bus within the local area to reduce the number of cars driving to and from the facility.

“From day one we have worked tirelessly to boost the sustainability across the site in Budapest. Adding increased solar generation capacity has been an ongoing project and it is an exciting moment to now have the ability to run our Global Innovation Centre on 100% solar energy,” said Szabolcs Zolyomi, GSC (Global Supply Chain) Factory Site Leader at Lenovo. “The new solar panels move us towards our goal of 4MW solar capacity at the site. Being located in Europe, with the ability to reduce freight miles and this additional solar energy capacity, we are supporting Lenovo’s sustainability goals in a very tangible way.”