Ball Aerospace: Boulder Energy Reporting ID EB160 and EB233

Prepared for:

City of Boulder

Planning, Housing + Sustainability

1101 Arapahoe Ave.

Boulder, CO 80302

Prepared by:

Ball Aerospace

1600 Commerce Street

Boulder, CO 80301

Ball Aerospace (Boulder Energy Reporting ID EB160 and EB233)

At Ball Aerospace, sustainability is embeddedin how we work and in the products and services we offer. We pioneer discoveriesthat enable our customers to performbeyond expectation and protect whatmatters most.We develop groundbreaking and innovative spacecraft, sensors, systems and components that provide critical climate and environmental data to assist policy makers in decision making. Our technology helps scientists better understand our planet’s atmosphere, ice mass, oceans, clouds and wind that allows for precise mapping of the Earth.

Ball supports environmental monitoring and forecasting programs, including weather, environmental intelligence, precipitation, drought, pollution, vegetation, and biodiversity measurements. The data captured through Ball-built instruments and satellites enables an enhanced understanding of the Earth’s ecosystem and the ozone layer, supports weather forecasting, storm tracking and rescue operations, and supports effective management of natural resources, including helping experts to make routine drought assessments and fire prevention plans.

Key scientific discoveries about environmental monitoring and its effects on the Earth relied significantly on instruments and spacecraft built by Ball Aerospace. Highlights from 2017 include:

  • The Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS-1) launched on November 18, 2017. JPSS-1, now known as NOAA-20, is the most advanced operational environmental system ever developed by government and industry, and significantly increases the timeliness and accuracy of forecasts three to seven days in advance of severe weather events. NOAA-20 is now circling in the same orbital plane as the Ball-built Suomi National Polar-Orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite. Ball Aerospace designed and manufactured the NOAA-20 spacecraft and the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite-Nadir (OMPS-N) instrument.
  • Ball Aerospace is developing the next-generation operational environmental satellite system, Weather System Follow-on – Microwave (WSF-M). WSF-M is a low earth orbit satellite with a passive microwave imaging radiometer instrument and a hosted government furnished energetic charged particle sensor. The satellite system will improve weather forecasting over maritime regions by taking global measurements of the atmosphere and ocean surface.
  • The Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer (GEMS) instrument is an ultraviolet/visible spectrometer capable of scanning across a selectable 5,000km East/West swath in less than 30 minutes using high spatial and spectral resolution. Hourly measurements by GEMS of key constituents that make up hazardous air pollution including ozone and nitrogen dioxide will improve early warnings for potentially dangerous pollution events and monitor long-term climate change in the Asia-Pacific region.
  • The Tropospheric EmissionsMonitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) instrument, a geostationary ultraviolet/visible spectrometer,will provide hourly measurements of air quality across North America. This instrument will make precise measurements of the key constituents of air pollution, including nitrogen dioxide, ozone, sulfur dioxide and atmospheric aerosols that have the greatest impact on human health and agriculture productivity. TEMPO is expected to improve air quality prediction accuracy by 50 percent and improve daylight measurements of atmospheric pollutants across the nation.
  • The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Microwave Imager (GMI) has completed three years of successful operations on orbit. The GPM spacecraft that hosts the GMI instrument provides frequent, near-global precipitation information critical for improving weather forecasting and protecting lives and property. The GMI is the on-orbit reference standard for calibrating precipitation measurements in the GPM constellation.
  • The heart of the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III,known as SAGE III on ISS (International Space Station), is the Ball-built SAGE III spectrometer that allows scientists to measure the quantity of atmospheric gases such as ozone, nitrogen dioxide, water vapor and aerosols in the Earth's atmosphere. Data on the ozone layer and other atmospheric gasses is important to understand for human life now and into the future.
  • NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-on (GRACE-FO) mission includes a Ball Aerospace advanced laser instrument, called the Laser Ranging Interferometer. The GRACE-FO mission utilizes twin satellites to monitor changes in underground water storage, ice sheets, glaciers and sea level. As the satellites rotate around the Earth, they constantly measure the distance between them, which changes as Earth's gravitational pull varies. These variations are a result of changes in Earth's mass – like the movement of water, ice, air and solid Earth via weather, climate change, etc. Ball’s Laser Ranging Interferometer, a new addition in the follow-on mission, is expected to greatly enhance the accuracy and precision of the distance measurements between the GRACE–FO satellites by tenfold and therefore further improve our understanding of Earth's gravity and the movement of key resources. GRACE-FO was launched into orbit on May 22, 2018 from Vandenberg Air Force Base.
  • NASA’s Green Propellant Infusion Mission (GPIM), due to launch in 2018, will enable the first time the U.S. will use a spacecraft to demonstrate and test the capabilities of a high-performance, non-toxic, “green” fuel on orbit. The new propellant is less harmful to the environment than the traditional toxic spacecraft fuel, hydrazine, increases fuel efficiency, decreases the complexity and cost of launch processing, and diminishes operational hazards for aerospace workers. Ball built the spacecraft bus, integrated and tested the payloads and propulsion system, and will provide launch and flight support.

Ball Aerospace is a subsidiary of Ball Corporation and is an integral part of the company’s larger sustainability program. Ball Corporation focuses its sustainability efforts on four priorities: Product Stewardship, Operational Excellence, Talent Management, and Community Ambassadors. Sustainability clearly is not a one-personjob. Ball’s 18,500 employees, together with its customers, suppliers, and through several multi-stakeholder partnerships, Ball addresses key sustainability challenges.

Since Ball’s operations impact its overall sustainability performance, the company aims to improve its processes and procedures continuously and to increase efficiencies. By introducing innovative technologies supported by its safety and environmental management systems, Ball has improved its safety track record, increasedenergy and water efficiencies, and diverted more waste to beneficial reuse. Global and business-specific data are available at

Ball was named the industry leader for container and packaging companies on the 2017 Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) for the fifth consecutive year. Ball maintained its best-in-class position on both the DJSI World Index and the Dow Jones Sustainability Index North America (DJSI NA).

Ball is also a member of the FTSE4Good Index Series on the London Stock Exchange since 2009 and is a constituent of the 2017 MSCI ESG Leaders Indexes. VigeoEiris, a leading European expert in assessing responsible performance, selected Ball as a member of the Euronext VigeoWorld 120 and US 50 indices (last confirmation May2018). Additional recognitions for its sustainability performance can be found at

Ball is committed to helping make the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), global goals to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all by 2030, a reality. All of its four sustainability priorities and associated goals are aligned with and contribute to 10 of the 17 SDGs. Ball’s main contribution will derive from its operations and its value chain. Ball will focus on shared value creation—through jobs, investments and economic growth, environmental protection, research and development, and the high sustainability standards to which the company holds itself and its suppliers accountable.

When working toward the global goals, Ball’s employees and their community engagement are valuable resources. This is why Ball joined IMPACT 2030, the only business-led effort designed to harness the power of corporate volunteers to address the SDGs. IMPACT 2030 believes that a commitment to corporate volunteering—when used in concert with the UN, peer companies, government, academia and civil society—is a powerful tool to accelerate the use of sustainable development principles and inspire the private sector to take positive action.

To drive measurable progress within operations and hold the company accountable for improving its processes, each Ball Corporation plant commits to two-year sustainability goals―one goal for each Big 6 metric. Progress is reported yearly for Ball Aerospace, aggregated as one plant within Ball Corporation, and evaluated by senior management within Ball’s Sustainability Steering Committee. For Ball Aerospace, a standardized measurement system that enables year-to-year comparisons on Big 6 metrics is used. The high visibility of the company’s performance with respect to these metrics helps drive accountability, engagement, and progress toward these goals.

To support Ball Corporation’s global sustainability efforts, Ball Aerospace sets sustainability goals across its building portfolio in lieu of setting them for individual buildings or municipalities. This allows Ball Aerospace to take a broad approach to sustainability and energy reduction. There are no specific goals per building or per industrial complex as defined by the City of Boulder as this sub-optimizes the allocation of resources available to support energy reduction efforts as a whole. Sustainability goals are normalized to provide standardized year-to-year comparisons. Ball Aerospace normalizes based on dollars of sales while high production business units’ normalization is based on number of units produced.

Ball Corporation is committed to bottom-up normalized targets for its global beverage can business to improve energy efficiency by 5 percent by 2018 from a 2016 baseline. The company plans to cut the carbon footprint of its beverage cans by 25 percent by 2020 from a 2010 baseline.

Ball Aerospace’s 2017 energy goals, established in late 2015 for its two-year sustainability commitment to Ball Corporation, was a decrease of 3.5% in electrical consumption over the 2015 baseline and a decrease of 5.4% for natural gas consumption over the 2015 baseline. As previously stated, energy consumption for Ball Aerospace is normalized over sales. Ball Aerospace’s overall electrical energy consumption, once normalized, showed a decrease of 16.2% from its 2016 level. For natural gas, the company had a 12.5% reduction from 2016. For ID EB160, Ball Aerospace saw a decrease in electrical consumption of 2.9%. As well for the same industrial complex, Ball Aerospace’s cumulative utility usage savings has generally increased year-to-year since 2008. For ID EB233, the company saw a 6.1% decrease in natural gas consumption and has seen a general leveling off in electrical consumption since 2015.

For the reporting year of 2017, Ball Aerospace implemented an energy sustainability project within its Colorado portfolio with the potential to save over 24,000 kWh annually:

  • Replaced existing interior lighting in an office suite in aWestminster, CO building with LED fixtures (outside of Boulder’s jurisdiction).

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