La Pietro Beretta Arms Factory announced the official data relating to the energy balance of last year. 2015 ended just a month ago and, in addition to recent acquisitions in the USA, the Gardone Val Trompia company wanted to highlight the attention paid to consumption, taking into account that it was also the year in which international diplomacies agreed on climate changes in Paris after the Conference of the Parties. In detail, the twelve months were concluded with an energy consumption that 72% is derived from self-production. The remaining 28%, on the other hand, refers to energy purchases on the market, with a sale to the Energy Services Manager (GSE) of 29% of what was self-produced.
In addition, the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions was 55 percentage points, which is to say that 7360 tons were not released into the atmosphere (6700 from hydroelectric energy as a renewable source and 660 from cogeneration. Franco Gussalli Beretta, number one of the Lombard company, commented on these numbers in a more than positive way. According to him, the results must be read with satisfaction, but the group is not yet satisfied, on the contrary it is stimulated to represent an industrial reality active in the green economy and attentive to the environment.
Furthermore, according to the president, improvement in this area can only be achieved through targeted investments and enhancing energy performance, both as regards industrial processes and for self-production. Gussalli Beretta remarked how the industrial history of Beretta can boast more than five centuries and how the practice of energy saving is not a recent discovery.
Attention to the environment is a commitment that has lasted for more than a hundred years, given that, as recalled by the president, Beretta acquired the rights to use a hydraulic outlet on the Mella river in 1913 (between the provinces of Brescia and Cremona), more precisely along the valley and through the Gardone Val Trompia plant. In this way it was fed a 440 kilowatt power plant, the so-called “Bresciana”, the first step towards today's energy saving.
Another important step in this sense was that of 1939, the year in which a similar plant (1200 kilowatts to be precise), called "Rovedolo", came into operation, which benefited from the addition of a cogeneration plant in 1998, without forgetting the reactivation of the "Blue Energy" plant in 2002. Further investments in photovoltaics were made during 2013 and nowadays in Gardone Val di Trompia the energy is generated by two plants.