Volkswagen has today claimed that its efforts to reduce emissions in line with the targets set by the Paris Climate Treaty are being successful.
Research supported by the UN
The Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), which is supported by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), UN Global Compact, the World Resources Institute and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), has said that it has investigated VW's efforts to reduce the carbon impact of its operations, and that the car maker's plans are in line with global efforts to limit warming to less than two-degrees Celsius.
The SBTi says that it evaluates only 'genuine CO2 reductions over a period of at least ten years' without taking into consideration any CO2-compensating climate projects such as carbon offsetting.
Climate neutral by 2050?
Volkswagen says that it is working to reduce the emissions from the construction and use of its vehicles by 30 per cent compared to 2018 levels, by 2030. Oliver Blume, Porsche CEO and in his role as Volkswagen AG Group Management Board Member for Production and the Environment stressed: "We are determined as a Group to be climate neutral by 2050. To that end, we have now set ourselves an ambitious interim target. The key levers are our e-mobility offensive and switching our plants over to green electricity."
Volkswagen's plan is that by 2030 CO2 emissions per kilometre driven will be 30 per cent lower than in 2018. This includes emissions from driving and from production of the fuel and electricity and the company openly recognises that taking into account both the production and the use-in-service of the cars it builds, the Group is responsible, by itself, for one per cent of total global CO2 emissions.
Renewable electricity for factories
Volkswagen says that the combination of more electric vehicles entering production and the switching of its factories to 'green' electricity is having a major impact on its corporate emissions. By 2023, all of Volkswagen's European operations should be running on renewable electricity, and it hopes that can be replicated globally by 2030 (although for China, it's less of a sure thing, considering China's continued reliance on coal-fired power stations).
"We congratulate Volkswagen on the fact that the company's targets for reducing greenhouse gases fulfil what is needed from a scientific perspective to implement the Paris Climate Agreement", says Cynthia Cummis, Director of Private Sector Climate Mitigation at SBTi partner the World Resources Institute. "With these targets, Volkswagen is positioning itself for a successful transformation to a net-zero emissions economy and is thus setting an example that the competitors must follow."