In 2009 the Company set out the ESPEC 2012 Green Plan, its third medium-term environmental plan, to serve as a set of guidelines for its environmental initiatives up to fiscal 2012. The plan specifies four priority issues: preventing global warming, recycling resources, reducing levels of hazardous substances, and contributing to society. It also outlines four sets of initiatives designed to enable us to achieve these goals, under the names of Green Products, Green Processes, Green Mind and Green Action.
To help prevent global warming, our top-priority issue at present, we aim to reduce CO2 emissions* by 6% (compared with fiscal 1990 levels) by fiscal 2010. We plan to achieve substantial reductions through initiatives such as (1) harnessing natural energy via technology, such as solar power generation, (2) introducing energy-saving equipment, hybrid vehicles and other high-efficiency technology, (3) reevaluating production processes and (4) adopting Kyoto mechanisms in areas such as emissions trading.

*This applies to domestic ESPEC Group companies that are subject to the blanket ISO 14001 certification, excluding commissioned test operations.