Volvo Cars’ manufacturing plant in Chengdu, the company’s largest in China, is now powered by 100% renewable electricity. This now takes the company’s global renewable electricity mix in its manufacturing network to 80%.
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This incredible achievement is the result of the Chengdu plant having a new supply contract, which will see the plant’s CO2 emissions drop by 11,000 tonnes per year. Until recently, the plant already sourced 70% of its electricity from renewable sources – this sees it address the last 30%.
Under the new contract, around 65% of the electricity supply comes from hydropower, while the remainder will be generated from solar power, wind power and other means.
“Our ambition is to reduce our carbon footprint through concrete, tangible actions,” said Javier Varela, Head of Industrial Operations and Quality at Volvo Cars. “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.”
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It marks the latest step towards Volvo Cars’ ambition to have climate-neutral manufacturing by 2025. Here, the automaker is looking to reduce its carbon footprint per car by 40% in comparison to its figures in 2018.
It’s great to see Volvo Cars driving toward a greener future in all parts of the world. In Europe, its plants have had a climate-neutral electricity supply since 2008, while the engine plant in Skövde, Sweden, was the first in the company’s network to become completely climate-neutral in 2018.
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Meanwhile in Ghent, Belgium, Volvo Cars installed 15,000 solar panels in 2018; marking a first of its kind in its global manufacturing network.
All of these steps have been taken, whereby Volvo Cars wants to generate 50% of its global sales from fully electric cars by 2025 – with the rest composing of hybrids. In other words: no more gasoline-only Volvo vehicles.
