Europe has announced that it will become a climate-neutral continent by 2050. This means that in its territory, due to human activity, no more CO2 will enter the atmosphere than can be absorbed by nature and CO2 sampling devices. These goals have shaken many manufacturing industries and forced companies to develop and implement a strategy to decarbonize their operations within specific deadlines.
Content will continue after the ad
Advertising
This is especially evident in the automotive industry. The production of this industry creates a quarter of carbon dioxide emissions, so it is in a hurry to switch to electric zero-emission cars. In addition, the European Parliament has decided that from 2035 it will no longer be allowed to sell new cars with an internal combustion engine in the European Union.
The company “Jaguar Land Rover” has set an even more ambitious goal – it not only plans to produce an electric car, but to achieve zero emissions or so-called net zero in all its operations by 2039. It envisages eliminating not only the emission of carbon dioxide, but also other climate-harmful gases. One of the biggest challenges for both automotive companies and industry leaders seeking to achieve net zero is the lack of technology. Unfortunately, in many areas they have not yet been developed.
Faced with the need to reduce their carbon footprint, many companies initially turned to offsetting their emissions. The easiest way to “pay back” the pollution caused is to plant forests and support organizations that deal with reforestation. However, scientists and environmental organizations soon cooled this enthusiasm: according to calculations, a tree begins to absorb CO2 only 20 years after planting. Investments in forest and biodiversity restoration are welcome, but society cannot afford to wait decades for forests to start saving it from the climate crisis. In order to stop climate change, production and business models must be fundamentally changed, in some areas even everything that has been considered valid until now.
Time for skeptics to change their minds
CO2 emissions are produced by any activity, and in the automotive industry a full cycle of gases occurs even during the production of vehicles. Therefore, companies have to cope with the difficult task of changing most of their processes. Manufacturers of even the most powerful and luxurious cars are steering away from internal combustion engines and towards electric drives.
It may be difficult for sworn 4×4 enthusiasts to come to terms with the idea of an efficient electric car, but such a car does not have to wait long – Land Rover will launch an electric model as early as 2024. In total, the manufacturer plans to introduce six electric cars this decade. On the other hand, “Jaguar” will produce only cars with electric drive from 2025.
Changes will affect not only the heart of this luxury brand car, but also the interior. The seats are expected to be covered not with leather, but with textiles made of wool or fiber obtained from eucalyptus leaves. The interior of the electric “I-Pace” is already available with “Econyl” material – a textile woven from recycled plastic.
Skeptics keep pointing out that, in terms of pollution, the most pressing problem related to electric cars is the batteries. However, the industry is actively looking for solutions for this as well. For example, “Jaguar Land Rover” has invested 23 million euros in the company “Battery Resourcers”, which is already capable of recycling battery cathode materials: nickel-cobalt oxide, lithium-iron oxide and others. The mentioned amount is intended for setting up modern production facilities. They will test new technologies and eventually plan to recycle 10,000 tons of electric car batteries per year.
A British company working with researchers at Brunel University has created a method to recycle aluminum and reuse it in new superstructures. It not only allows you to take a step towards the circular economy and saving primary raw materials, but also to reduce CO2 – the use of aluminum that has already been extracted and later recycled reduces energy consumption by 90%.
If there is no sustainable alternative, you have to create it yourself
In some sectors, there are serious barriers to vehicle electrification or alternative fuels, mostly related to specific requirements. “For example – agricultural tractor equipment. When the harvesting of grain begins, the work is extremely intensive, the equipment works continuously, and any unnecessary pause causes losses. Therefore, downtime due to long charging is not suitable here. You can seriously think about switching tractor equipment to electricity when suitable technologies have been developed and there will be reasonable purchase amounts,” says Guntars Pulss, editor of “Profi Latvija” magazine.
“This does not mean that there is no progress in this area. For example, in the USA there are at least two companies that offer electric tractors. Such equipment is starting to appear in warehouses and construction, because of strict noise restrictions in cities. For now, they are separate models, and it is more about for a niche product,” says Guntar.
However, there are companies in the world that do not want to wait and are ready to act on their own, even if their specialization is not related to technology. Thus, the Lithuanian agricultural company “AUGA Group” has set the goal of becoming ecologically neutral by 2030. In order to implement such changes, the company had to introduce a completely new technology that was not available before. The company’s marketing manager Gedimins Judzents joined the company just when it started on the path of sustainability.
“The driving factor? It can be said that it is precisely the lack of necessary technologies. We decided to develop solutions on our own, and now our task is to make them work on a large scale,” Gedimin says.
It’s easier for energy and construction companies – technologies that allow you to work with less emissions are already ready. It remains for companies to calculate what investments they can afford and implement them. “For example, if we talk about light road transport, electrification technologies have not only been developed, but also introduced, and although the path is not easy, abandoning internal combustion machines will most likely not cause major problems. In agriculture, the situation is more complicated: there is a lack of technology, and the technique that is offered, is not a universal solution,” Gedimins explains.
Therefore, the company decided to act radically and create its own biomethane hybrid tractor with an electric drive. After a year of tests, the production of the first series of the new equipment has begun.
The unique model is powered by biomethane, which is obtained from agricultural waste, in this case cow dung. Instead of escaping into the atmosphere, the gas becomes a fuel, and the benefit is twofold – both economic and environmental.
The crisis forces a new look at sustainability
Gedimins Judzents points out that changes are not only taking place in research laboratories and factories. Although the last years are associated with instability, uncertainty and crisis for most people, the attitude towards sustainability has changed for many: people have realized that more environmentally friendly solutions sometimes also pay off economically.
“I would call it a kind of social innovation. People have discovered that by choosing sustainable solutions they can save money. Sustainability is becoming the new norm and it is changing the way we think about business and society. On the other hand, we as consumers are quite conservatively. We like our old habits, but it’s good if we can choose an alternative that is less harmful to the environment and climate. The revolution of electric cars also happened when they could already travel a considerable distance with one charge and when a convenient charging infrastructure appeared,” says Gedimins.
“Of course, we can already preach – don’t travel, don’t drive, don’t eat such and such food! But making sacrifices in all areas is difficult for people. It’s better to offer – choose this thing, it’s more sustainable. Knowing how the product was made, people feel good about giving its contribution, but does not sacrifice comfort,” Gedimins summarizes.
His vision is also confirmed by Jaguar Land Rover statistics. In 2022, the company’s most popular model in Ireland was the Range Rover Sport with a plug-in hybrid system, and 97 percent of the models sold were either plug-in hybrids or electric.
