Environmental Accounting

With a quantitative understanding of the costs and effects of environmental protection measures, the Kobe Steel Group is using an environmental accounting method evaluating investment and effectiveness for more cost-effective environment management.

Environment-related Investment

To reduce environmental impact, investment in the building and maintenance of environment-friendly facilities is ongoing, and wide-ranging environment-related measures have been introduced. Improvements to efficiency are also being made by eliminating some production processes.

Total environment-related capital investment (Parent only)

Total environment-related maintenance costs (Parent only)

Total energy-saving-related capital investment (Parent only)

Values above graphs indicate total summed up from 1970.

Capital investment for fiscal 2008 totaled approximately 9.6 billion yen and expenditure reached about 43.7 billion yen. Some 49% of this expenditure went to atmospheric pollution prevention, 14% went to water pollution prevention, and 23% went to waste and by-product processing. Also, about 3.2 billion yen, or 7% of total expenditure, was spent on research and development.

Breakdown of Capital Investment and Expenditure (Parent only)

(unit: billion yen)

Category Capital expenditure Costs Environment protection measures Atmospheric pollution prevention 3.12 21.33 Water pollution prevention 4.89 6.27 Measures to prevent global* warming Energy-saving measures 0.38 - Recycling Processing of by-products and wastes 1.19 10.20 EMS formulation, maintenance, education - 0.01 Monitoring Monitoring and measuring environmental impact - 0.46 Personnel costs for monitoring environmental measures - 1.65 R&D Eco products, lowering environmental impact of manufacturing processes - 3.22 Community activities Planting, support for environmental groups, publicity - 0.06 Others Levies on volumes of pollutants - 0.46 TOTAL 9.58 43.66

*Expenditure on measures to prevent global warming is included as operations. Therefore, only capital investment is listed.

Environment Conservation Effect

For effects of environmental conservation, please refer to Measures to Prevent Global Warming and Resource Recycling. The benefit of investment to control dust is shown as the amount of dustfall.

	Topics Highly Rated by Development Bank of Japan In 2009, Kobe Steel was assessed as having a "Highly Advanced Approach to Environmentally Responsible Management," the highest environment rating* offered by the Development Bank of Japan (DBJ). This rating is the result of Kobe Steel's efforts to strengthen its environment management system and develop environment-friendly products. * Implemented as a part of the DBJ's environmentally rated financing system. A company's environmental management is assessed and favorable financing extended based on three rating stages.