Yamaha Motor has announced it will build a new verification testing facility equipped with a melting furnace and heat treatment furnace using hydrogen gas at its Morimachi Factory in Japan.
From 2025, Yamaha will begin development and verification of technologies and techniques for melting aluminium alloy using hydrogen gas, as well as comprehensive verification testing for requisite facilities, equipment, and more.
By the end of 2026, Yamaha plan to complete the development of technologies for melting aluminium alloy and heat-treating cast parts using hydrogen gas and gradually implementing them at their domestic and international casting factories from 2027 onward.
This verification testing is part of Yamaha Motor’s efforts to minimise Scope 1 CO2 emissions across the life cycles of their products. In the manufacture of cast parts for motorcycles, outboard motors, and other products, natural gas and other fossil fuels are currently used to provide the thermal energy required for melting aluminium alloys.
In the search for alternative energy sources, Yamaha judged that electrification is not suited for the melting process in terms of energy efficiency, as it requires a large amount of heat, so they turned their attention to hydrogen energy, which Yamaha Motor is already studying as an option for reducing Scope 3 emissions.
The verification testing itself will include examining the influence hydrogen gas has on quality and developing temperature control techniques using hydrogen burners. Yamaha are also considering the introduction of equipment for producing green hydrogen and methanation equipment (through joint research with Shizuoka University) to produce e-methane without needing external heat sources. Yamaha Motor will work to develop equipment for producing hydrogen gas at low cost as well as technologies for capturing and reusing the CO2 in exhaust gases.
Yamaha Motor, in line with its Yamaha Motor Group Environmental Plan 2050, is working toward being carbon neutral throughout all of its supply chains, including the company’s business activities by 2050. Furthermore, with Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, Yamaha have accelerated their plans to achieve carbon neutrality at their manufacturing sites—including at group companies—by 2035 and are ramping up their efforts to that end.
