Pioneers in climate-friendly vehicle manufacturing

The location in Zwickau, Saxony, plays a key role in the system transformation to e-mobility: With the ID.3 and ID.4, the first members of the Volkswagen ID. family are coming off the assembly line there in a CO₂-neutral manner. The principle: avoid energy consumption, use renewable energies, compensate unavoidable emissions. In order to improve the environmental balance, several projects have been implemented in Zwickau. For example, the plant obtains green electricity from Volkswagen Kraftwerk GmbH from hydroelectric power plants, wind and solar parks. The site covers its other needs with its own combined heat and power plant. This is powered by natural gas, which is significantly more climate-friendly than generating electricity from coal. A further advantage: “Incidentally”, the highly efficient combined heat and power plant also covers 70 percent of the heating requirements. Further CO₂ savings result from the expanded or newly built halls. These were built in accordance with the latest energy-saving regulations and minimize the consumption of electricity, water and heat according to use. The consumption of natural gas during thermal post-combustion in the paint shop was also reduced.

Production at the Audi plant in Brussels is completely CO₂-neutral, certified by independent experts. The production facility of the fully electric Audi e-tron*** has been using green electricity since 2012. The roof of the plant also houses the region’s largest photovoltaic system with a total area of 107,000 square meters. The second pillar alongside climate-friendly electricity is the site’s heat supply with renewable energies. The company offsets CO₂ emissions, which cannot be avoided at present, with so-called carbon credit projects. In total, Audi thus saves around 40,000 tons of CO₂ emissions per year.

Bentley Motors’ plant in Crewe makes an important contribution to the decarbonization of the Volkswagen Group. The site produces all its electrical energy with solar systems or purchases it as certified green electricity. At the beginning of last year, 10,000 additional solar modules with a surface area of more than 16,000 square meters were installed on the factory premises. Together with the 20,800 roof modules already in place, this increased the energy capacity to 7.7 MW, which corresponds to the needs of more than 1,750 households. Bentley is offsetting unavoidable emissions through certified climate protection projects.