Volvo Trucks to Make its Belgian Assembly Plant CO2-Neutral
23 February 2006
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| Inside Ghent. |
Volvo Trucks plans to rely on wind-power and biofuels to supply electricity and heating for its Ghent, Belgium, assembly plant, thereby resulting in no net contribution of carbon dioxide resulting from vehicle production to the atmosphere.
This is the Volvo Truck’s second assembly to become “carbon-dioxide-free.” The Volvo Trucks Tuve plant in Sweden became the first such plant last year.
The company is adding three wind-power generating stations beside the Ghent plant along with a new biofuel production facility; Belgian firm Electrabel is handling the construction. The project is due to come online in 2007.
As one of the world’s largest manufacturers of trucks, it is our responsibility to handle carbon dioxide emissions in the best possible way and to reduce their effects.
—Lars Mårtensson, Environmental Affairs director at Volvo Trucks
The Volvo Trucks assembly plant in Ghent, Volvo Europa Truck NV, currently relies mainly on natural gas for its heating. For some time now, Volvo Europa Truck NV has been working with a variety of projects aimed at reducing energy consumption in the plant.
With 1,500 employees, the Volvo Trucks plant in Gent makes the Volvo FH, Volvo FM and Volvo FL truck models. In 2005 the factory produced 30,400 vehicles, mostly for export to other markets throughout Europe.
Call me when they figure out how to make the trucks themselves CO2 neutral. All manufacturing should be moving in this direction, no question.
Posted by: Schwa | 23 February 2006 at 11:47 PM
The BMW post mentioned about a ton of CO2 used per car when manufacturing. If we are talking hte potential energy used to make the car in terms of coal, then the savings for making a Volvo truck are 3-4 tonnes per vehicle. 30,400 vehicles by this analogy is over 100,000 tonnes saved.
Mind you, they may also have been referring to the CO2 produced when manufacturing the steel for the vehicle itself, in which case there is no avoiding it unless the vehicle is made out of some super plastic(need oil) or some alloy like titanium and aluminium(expensive).
Posted by: Adrian | 27 February 2006 at 06:49 PM