Volvo Cars' Chengdu Car Plant Powered By 100% Renewable Electricity
Volvo Cars manufacturing plant in Chengdu, China is now powered by 100% renewable electricity. This is their largest plant in the country, and they have recently signed a new supply contract which will reduce the plant’s CO2 emissions by more than 11,000 tonnes per year. It has also taken the company’s global renewable electric mix in its manufacturing network to 80%.
This is the latest step from Volvo Car’s which highlights their passion and ambition to have climate neutral manufacturing by 2025, and is part of their wider climate plan to reduce the overall carbon footprint per car by 40% between 2018 and 2025. Their aim is to be a climate-neutral company by 2040.
The Chengdu plant used to source 70% of its electricity from renewable sources, but the new electric agreement addressed the last 30%, and is used in line to help reduce carbon emissions from industry and to reduce the carbon footprint. Under the new agreement signed, around 65% of the electric supply will now come from hydropower, while the remaining will come from solar power, wind power and other renewable sources.
Javier Varela, Head of Industrial Operations and Quality at Volvo Cars comments; “Our ambition is to reduce our carbon footprint through concrete, tangible actions. Securing a fully renewable electricity supply for our largest plant in China is a significant milestone and underlines our commitment to taking concrete, meaningful action.”
Since 2008, all of Volvo’s plants in Europe have had a climate-neutral electricity supply, whilst their engine plant in Skövde, Sweden was their first within their network to become completely climate neutral in 2018. At their Ghent plant in Belgium, they installed 15,000 solar panels in 2018, this was the first large-scale introduction of solar energy in its global manufacturing network.
Volvo’s plans are one of the most ambitious in the automotive industry, along with other measures including to generate 50% of global sales from fully electric cars by 2025, with the rest hybrids. Their plan goes further than just addressing tailpipe emissions, they also want to tackle carbon emissions through the company’s wider operations, its supply chain and through recycling and reusing materials.
For more information on Volvo electric vehicles, please contact Caffyns Volvo today.