Volvo Cars has reached an agreement with its energy suppliers to ensure that all electricity delivered to its plants in Sweden and Belgium is derived from hydropower. This is part of a plan for its European production operations to be ‘climate-neutral’.

“We aim to use renewable energy to the greatest possible extent and hydropower is the best alternative that our suppliers can offer at present,” said manufacturing chied Magnus Hellsten.

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The agreement is with Vattenfall in Sweden and Electrabel in Belgium and covers all electricity contracted by Volvo Cars’ purchasing department. The utility providers sell certificates to guarantee that all electricity delivered to the automaker in Sweden and Belgium has been generated from hydropower. The agreement covers about 1000 GWh (gigawatt hours).

“This is part of our continuous drive to make our production climate-neutral, both as regards direct and indirect climate impact. In a future scenario we will also be examining other types of energy for our production units, such as biogas and wind-power,” said Hellsten.

For space heating, Volvo uses mainly natural gas but in future it is planning to replace this with renewable biogas, according to the automaker’s director of environmental protection Mihkel Laks.

Like other vehicle manufacturers, Volvo Cars has also been actively seeking to improve the energy efficiency of its manufacturing operations. It says that although the areas it heats have almost doubled in size over the years, energy consumption has remained constant.

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In recent years this has started to fall thanks to on-going efforts to save energy. A recent example is a review of the development and engineering departments’ building in Torslanda. This resulted in energy savings of about 30% and an improved indoor climate.

“We are now carefully checking all our facilities. By applying our experiences from successful projects, we can quickly achieve major improvements,” said Laks.