Reuters: Samsung Investing $4.3B for Environmentally Friendly Electronics

(July 20, 2009) SEOUL, South Korea &#151 Samsung Electronics will invest 5.4 trillion won ($4.3 billion) in green research and development and facilities to make it a leading eco-friendly company by 2013, report Cho Meeyoung and Rhee So-eui, Reuters.

Of the total, 3.1 trillion won will be spent to develop products that cause less damage to the environment. The remainder will go to energy-saving technologies and the environmental improvement of manufacturing facilities, the company said in a statement.

Samsung Electronics did not detail how it would finance the initiatives but had around 5.3 trillion won in cash and cash equivalent at end-March.

“This eco-management initiative will encompass all of our global operations, supply chain, and the complete lifecycle of Samsung products, and by achieving these goals we aim to lead the way in tackling the environmental problems that are facing our planet,” Samsung Electronics’ vice chairman and CEO Yoon-woo Lee said.

Samsung’s plan includes reducing greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing facilities by 50%, cutting total indirect greenhouse gas emissions from all products by 84 million tons through 2013, and ensuring all of its products are more environmentally friendly by increasing energy efficiency through measures such as cutting standby power consumption.

Samsung’s chip and LCD businesses, major sources of greenhouse gas emissions, will invest “significant” sums to reduce pollution, it said.

South Korea has made a major push on environmentally friendly investment in recent weeks, Reuters reported, with the South Korean government planning to invest 107 trillion won, 2% of its annual GDP, in environment-related industries over the next five years. It also separately said that it aimed to raise 2 trillion won for so-called “green industries” from the private sector. HSBC estimates that of Asian governments’ stimulus packages against the recent credit crunch, spending on green-related investments will account for 20%, or $272 billion. That is more than double the amount earmarked for green projects in the Americas and five times bigger than Europe’s.

By 2020, Samsung’s competitor LG Electronics Inc is also aiming to lower its greenhouse gas emission from the production process by 150,000 tonnes compared with its 2008 emission levels, and it will cut the gas emission caused by using LG Electronics’ products down by 30 million tonnes per year, Reuters reported.

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