Nissan Motor Company has recently announced its plan to expand renewable energy generation at the Sunderland Plant located in the United Kingdom. The Company declared that the renewable energy production is targeted to be increased by 20MW from the existing wind turbine and solar farm in its Plant in Sunderland to achieve carbon neutrality.
Engenera, a partner company of Nissan, is to develop and install the proposed solar farm. The Company aims to install additional 37 000 panels, which would provide around 20% of the plant's total energy coming from the onsite renewables if approved. Furthermore, the power generated is sufficient to construct every zero-emission, carbon-neutral Nissan LEAF sold in all of Europe.
Image source: global.nissan.com
The utilization of renewable sources for the production and manufacturing operations was commenced in Sunderland Nissan Company in 2005 with installing the first onsite wind turbines. According to the officials of the Company, the existing ten turbines generate around 6.6 MW of power. The Solar Farm was added only in 2016 and accounted for the production of 4.75 MW of power. With the addition of the proposed 20 MW solar farm, the plant's total output from all the onsite renewables would reach as high as 32 MW.
The Company has set the goal to electrify all of its manufactured cars by the early 2030s in the primary market areas. Further, Nissan aims to achieve carbon neutrality in all of the production and manufacturing operations of the Company and develop full-fledged carbon-neutral products by the end of 2050.
The use of renewable energy in the Nissan-LEAF manufacturing process adopted in Sunderland Plant will guide the Company towards carbon neutrality.