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Volvo Creating World’s First CO2-Free Automotive Plant

AB Volvo is making Volvo Trucks’ plant in Tuve the world’s first CO2-free automotive plant by using wind power and biofuel as sources for all the plant’s electricity and heat.

Combined with efforts to achieve energy savings of up to 20%, Volvo, in cooperation with Göteborg Energi is currently building five large wind power plants and a new biofuel plant adjacent to the Tuve plant.

The five wind power plants alone will increase the amount of wind-power generated electricity in Sweden by 4%. When the plant does not fully utilize the produced electricity and heat, the surplus energy will be distributed to other customers via the district heating and electricity network. The wind power plants and the new biofuel plant are scheduled for completion during 2007.

The Greenhouse Effect is a reality and the automotive industry has a specific responsibility for coping with emissions of carbon dioxide. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions is no easy task, but the issue is so important that I believe we must be prepared to try out a variety of different alternatives, if we really want to succeed. Our investment in the Tuve plant is one such effort.

This is not solely an admirable environmental effort. We also expect that it will eventually be profitable on a purely commercial basis.

—Volvo’s Chief Executive Officer Leif Johansson

Volvo plans to make more of its manufacturing plants CO2-free. According to forecasts from the Environmental Protection Agency, Sweden will achieve the goal of reducing its total emissions of carbon dioxide by 1% in 2010, compared with 1990 levels.

This is an area in which Volvo can truly make a contribution. If all our plants in Sweden were made CO2-free, the reduction would correspond to a full one percent of Sweden’s total emissions of carbon dioxide.

—Leif Johansson.

Comments

Michael Chua

Amazing! If all vehicle factories in the world could produce at zero carbon dioxide emission, then surely our global warming would be decelerated?

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