Toyota plans to make factories carbon neutral 15 years earlier than its goal

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By Ashika Rajan, Trainee Reporter
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Japanese automotive manufacturer Toyota Motor plans to make all of its global factories carbon neutral by 2035, a Senior Executive said, pushing the goal up from 2050 by 15 years.

Mr. Masamichi Okada, Toyota’s Chief Production Officer, stated that the automaker will first focus on introducing new technologies for processes like painting, coating, and casting.

“In this way, the processes that have a high generation of CO2 will be focused on to reduce as much as possible, or even eliminate CO2 emissions,” Mr. Okada added.

He pointed out that “by identifying these areas, we will focus our resources and we believe that will contribute to shortening the time until we can achieve carbon neutrality.”

According to Mr. Okada, the automaker will examine having onsite and offsite renewable energy power sources.

With pressure mounting on global automakers to reduce emissions, the luxury carmaker BMW said that its Chinese factories will be carbon-neutral by the end of this year, while Ford plans to power all of its operations with locally sourced renewable energy by 2035.

Toyota has stated in recent years that electric vehicles (EVs) will play a greater role in lowering emissions, but other solutions should be used, such as its popular hybrid and slow-selling hydrogen vehicles.

Toyota intends to have several options to attain carbon neutrality, according to Mr. Okada, who added that the automaker wants to work with different types of models for EVs and assemble them simultaneously.

“We’re going to utilize our experience and knowledge that we have gained through the years,” he said.

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