Danfoss receives planning approval for Low-Carbon Innovation Centre

Danfoss has received planning permission from Midlothian Council for a new £25 million Low-Carbon Innovation Centre in Edinburgh. Located at the Shawfair Business Park, the centre will provide a home for Danfoss teams working on next-generation, climate-friendly technologies in hydraulics, digitalisation and electrification; it will also include new manufacturing facilities.

Covering 75,000ft², the facility will serve as the ‘Centre of Excellence’ for Danfoss’s ‘Digital Displacement’ technology, which ‘radically improves’ productivity and control in off-highway and industrial applications, while delivering significant reductions in CO₂ emissions.

The centre will also house Danfoss Editron — Danfoss Power Solutions’ electrification division — and ‘anchor the activities’ in the ‘Electric Powertrain Integration for Heavy Commercial Vehicles’ (EPIC) programme.

Together with partners Meritor and Electra Commercial Vehicles, Danfoss Editron has secured funding from the UK’s Advanced Propulsion Centre and Innovate UK to develop a next-generation zero-emission electric powertrain for commercial vehicles, providing OEMs with an advanced solution designed to meet global CO₂ reduction targets. The new centre will become Danfoss’s UK headquarters for decarbonisation programmes.

The UK Low-Carbon Innovation Centre will be the first building in Danfoss’s global portfolio to be operationally carbon-neutral, an ‘important first step’ for the company to achieve its goal of becoming carbon neutral in all of its global operations by 2030.

The building will recover energy used during production and testing processes as its primary heating source, with a heat pump available as a backup if required. The building’s electricity consumption will also be covered by a ‘Green Power Purchase Agreement’.

According to estimates, the annual energy savings for heating the center will be about 75% less than a conventional building of a similar size.

The new centre will be fully operational by the end of 2022. At the time of opening, Danfoss expects 110 team members to be based at the facility, 30 of whom will be ‘new hires’, rising to around 200 within four years of opening.