Piana Technology, the 439-year-old Italian-made textile company known for innovations within the fiber and nonwovens textiles markets, has gone live with a solar panel system at their Nonwovens facility in Cartersville, GA. The facility upgrade comes during a landmark year for the company, whose E/SMART high-performance nonwoven fiber technology was named as a CES 2022 Innovation Awards Honoree, and an honorable mention as one of Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas.

The Georgia-based facility is a powerhouse for textile production, specializing in vertically- and cross-lapped nonwovens. Since 2016, the facility has manufactured a variety of intermediate products that are behind many of the common household products used today.

As part of their sustainability journey, Piana Technology has committed to shrink their climate impact with clean energy as part of the solution. The system went live on August 5 and is a positive step both for the company and the local community.

It has partnered with Southern View Energy, a local solar electrical design and solar installation company, to carefully review the facility’s energy profile and pilot an installment project. The new 471 kW system is poised to supply over 622,000 kWh each year and avoid an estimated 460 tons of CO2 a year, equivalent to 125 acres of trees. Although most of this energy will go towards the facility, on days where there is overproduction, energy will go back to the city of Cartersville for redistribution.

“This is our first PV system, so this is a huge step for us,” says Daniela Leal, Piana’s sustainability manager. “Our goal at Piana Technology is to cut our emissions in half in the next two-three years, so of course we want to exploit every meaningful opportunity to meet that goal. This new accomplishment is helping us do exactly that, and even as we’re celebrating, we’re looking ahead to the next project.”