Volvo Cars has announced that its Torslanda facility in Sweden is the company's newest manufacturing plant to achieve a fully climate-neutral status. The announcement is in line with the automaker's ambition of making its global manufacturing network climate neutral by 2025. The Torslanda site is the second such facility to achieve the carbon-neutral status, after the Skovde engine plant in Sweden became climate-neutral in 2018. Volvo says it counts a manufacturing site as fully climate neutral when it registers zero net increase in the emission of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere as a result of the electricity and heating used by the plant.
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The Volvo Torslanda plant has been using carbon-neutral electricity since 2008
Speaking about the new milestone, Javier Varela, head of industrial operations and quality at Volvo Cars, said, "Establishing Torslanda as our first climate-neutral car plant is a significant milestone. We are committed to having a climate-neutral manufacturing network by 2025 and this achievement is a sign of our determination as we consistently work to reduce our impact on the environment."
The Torslanda car plant is the company's oldest but has been powered by climate-neutral electricity since 2008. It now also has climate-neutral heating. Volvo says half of the plant's heating comes from biogas while the rest is largely sourced from district heating through industrial waste heat. In addition to the climate-neutral heating, the Torslanda facility also constantly reduces the amount of energy it uses. This has been achieved by targeted improvements in its operations during 2020, which helped in annualised energy savings of nearly 7000 Megawatt-hour (MWh), enough to power 450 Swedish family homes for a year.
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50% of Volvo's Torlsanda car plant heating comes from biogas and the rest from district heating through industrial waste heat
Going forward, Volvo plans to make more efficient upgrades to its lighting and heating systems at the plant. This will lead to annualised energy savings of around 20,000 mWh by 2023. The company aims to reduce energy usage per car produced by 30 per cent across its manufacturing network in 2025. Volvo also says it will develop the brand's own renewable electricity generation capacity on-site.
Volvo's climate plan also includes electrifying its entire lineup of passenger cars. The company is already phasing out diesel from its fleet globally, moving to petrol and electric fleet. The plan also aims to reduce carbon emissions in the company's larger operations including supply chain and through recycling and reuse of materials, following the circular economy.
