Under the "double carbon" goal, strengthening the green and low-carbon nature of the manufacturing process will further enlarge the emission reduction capacity of the new energy automobile industry.
"It's snowing in the Sahara Desert".
Recently, the British "Daily Mail" reported this unexpected incident. However, the original dry and hot desert has not only snowed this time, but it has become more frequent in recent years.
Pictured: Snow falls on the Sahara Desert
Image source: Daily Mail
Although the causes of snow in desert areas are complex, they all point to one hot word – climate change.
Global warming, ocean acidification, extreme weather and other climate problems have swept the world, which not only breaks the ecological balance of the earth, but also affects people's normal production and life.
Fortunately, the world has long established a basic consensus on the deterioration of the climate situation, and climate change has become a global issue with high priority.
Chart: Global greenhouse gas emissions
Image credit: UN Climate Action
Greenhouse gases are well known to be a major contributor to climate change. To this end, countries and different industrial sectors around the world continue to promote low-carbon and zero-carbon transformation to reduce greenhouse gases generated by human activities.
In September 2020, China officially announced the goal of "carbon peak in 2030 and carbon neutrality in 2060", injecting strong impetus into global climate governance.
Although Chinese average carbon emissions are lower than other countries, it is an indisputable fact that total emissions rank first in the world. Achieving carbon neutrality in China is therefore an ambitious goal and a challenging undertaking.
To achieve this goal, all industries will face the challenge of low-carbon transformation – which means not only the upgrading of management, technology and products, but also the reshaping of the concept of low-carbon development.
A recipe for carbon reduction in the transportation industry
Fossil fuels are the most direct and important source of greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, a large number of energy-consuming industries have become the top priority on the road to low-carbon transformation. As one of the major carbon emitting industries, the transportation industry is under tremendous pressure to reduce emissions.
Chart: Global greenhouse gas emissions by economic sector
Image credit: Our Word in Data (compiled from the World Resources Institute)
Road transport accounts for the majority of the rapidly growing carbon dioxide emissions in the transportation sector.
In China, emissions from the transport sector account for about 10% of total emissions, while vehicle emissions account for 7.5% of total emissions. The low-carbon transformation of the transportation industry is also included in one of the top ten actions of China's carbon peak.
This undoubtedly puts forward new requirements for the development of the transportation industry. However, at the time of industry change, coupled with the help of the "double carbon" goal, the transportation field seems to have found an effective response, that is, the development of new energy vehicles, especially the development of smart pure electric vehicles in new energy vehicles.
Since its birth, new energy vehicles have been branded with low-carbon environmental protection. Compared with traditional fuel vehicles, new energy vehicles will hardly produce greenhouse gases during driving. If it can completely replace fuel vehicles, new energy vehicles will effectively solve the problem of reducing emissions in road traffic.
Riding on the carbon neutral wind, the new energy automobile industry is developing rapidly. According to the International Energy Agency, there are currently more than 10 million electric vehicles on the road worldwide. China has also become the largest market for new energy vehicles.
In 2021, China sold 3.52 million new energy vehicles, ranking first in the world for seven consecutive years.
According to the latest "14th Five-Year Plan" comprehensive work plan for energy conservation and emission reduction, by 2025, China's new energy vehicle sales will account for 20%. Some research institutions predict that this number will exceed 60% by 2035.
As the proportion of green electricity continues to rise, new energy vehicles will consume more renewable electricity, and their emission reduction potential will be further unleashed.
New energy vehicles have confirmed the characteristics of "low-carbon environmental protection" in people's eyes. However, if the vision only stays on the product itself, it is not enough to see the low-carbon nature of new energy vehicles.
Especially for new energy vehicle companies, if they only pay attention to the product level, they may not be able to grasp the future market.
Carbon reduction ideas for the whole life cycle
According to the "Research Report on China's Automobile Low Carbon Action Plan", in 2020, the total carbon emissions of the entire industrial chain of passenger cars in the mainland will be about 670 million tons of carbon dioxide, of which 74% of the carbon emissions will come from the use of automobiles, and 26% of the carbon emissions will come from the manufacturing links of the upstream industrial chain.
Although different research institutions have come up with different results on the proportion of emissions, one thing is certain - emissions from the automotive industry come not only from the use link, but also from the upstream industry chain manufacturing link. Solving the emission problem of the automotive industry requires the perspective of the whole industry chain and the whole life cycle.
On the other hand, new energy vehicle companies belong to the manufacturing industry and have green and low-carbon development demands. This is also in line with the prevailing ESG investment philosophy.
ESG stands for the acronym of the three English words Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance. Today, about one-third of the world's asset management scale is linked to ESG standards, and the scale and popularity of China's ESG investment have been rising in the past two years.
Among the three pillars of ESG, the environment (E) is one of the dimensions with the highest market attention. Under the ESG standard, investors will not only evaluate whether the product meets the low-carbon environmental protection standards, but also examine whether the production and operation of the enterprise has green and low-carbon attributes, such as energy saving and emission reduction benefits.
WM Automobile Wenzhou "Industry 4.0" new energy intelligent manufacturing production base
At present, China's new car-making forces are gradually developing from the OEM model to the self-built factory model. Through their own production bases, new energy vehicle companies have enhanced their production capacity competitiveness, but they are also facing new green challenges.
Only by paying attention to green and low-carbon factors in the whole life cycle, including manufacturing, can the low-carbon value of new energy vehicles be exerted to the extreme.
For new energy vehicle companies, infiltrating the green and low-carbon concept into the production process and strengthening the green and low-carbon nature of the manufacturing process will help cultivate new green competitiveness.
Green and low-carbon car manufacturing samples
In the law of procedure, there is a concept called "the fruit of the poisonous tree". In short, it refers to evidence obtained indirectly by using illegally obtained evidence as a clue (like the fruit of a poisonous tree). In order to ensure that the evidence collection process is legal and compliant, the "fruit of the poisonous tree" should be excluded in principle.
So, if the new energy vehicles in the name of low-carbon environmental protection ignore the emission problems in the production process, can they still be labeled as "low-carbon environmental protection"? Should it still be accepted by the market and society?
On this question, the new forces of car manufacturing seem to have given the answer with actions - every link from the source of car manufacturing is improved and perfected, so as to achieve green environmental protection of the whole industry chain.
As a benchmark car company in the new forces, Tesla has been sought after by many young consumers since its inception.
When the Shanghai Gigafactory was completed, Tesla not only reduced the production cost of new batteries by 56% by using its self-developed 4680 battery, but also reduced the energy consumption of the production line by 70%, and achieved a waste recovery rate of 96%.
Tesla's gigafactory can be described as a benchmark for the world's new car companies. However, China's local car-making forces are not inferior, and even a car company began to lay out the gigafactory very early, and it was built with the goal of "double carbon".
This is the smart electric vehicle head player WM Motors. WM Motor's New Energy Intelligent Automotive Industry 4.0 Park not only brings together the four major functions of intelligent manufacturing, intelligent logistics, flexible supporting parts and components, and automatic driving testing, but also integrates a powerful green and low-carbon design concept.
From base construction, to distributed photovoltaic power generation systems, to the replacement of fuel forklifts with battery forklifts, to a series of low-carbon car manufacturing processes, to the use of environmentally friendly and recyclable materials, the WM Wenzhou base has improved its energy structure and reduced resource consumption.
For example, in terms of building materials selection, WM selected local building materials with low energy, high performance and high durability during the construction of the base, which consolidated the core of the preliminary work of carbon reduction and improved the recycling of the whole vehicle. Among them, WM also set 85% recyclable rate and 95% recyclable rate.
For example, in terms of energy saving, WM smart production base has also designed a set of recyclable clean energy utilization systems.
WM Wenzhou production base has a distributed photovoltaic power generation system, in the parking lot to build a photovoltaic carport for large-scale use, and strive to effectively solve the problem of high temperature in the open parking lot in the summer, while making full use of clean energy.
Since its completion, the distributed photovoltaic power generation system alone has saved 10,000 tons of standard coal and reduced the cumulative carbon dioxide by 28,000 tons.
WM Wenzhou production base photovoltaic power generation system
On this basis, WM also introduced a horizontal machining center, which enables it to reduce electricity and production costs on the basis of improving production efficiency, saving 89,000 KWH per year, and meeting the needs of a family of three in Shanghai to live at the third price for up to 18 years.
In addition, WM has also replaced all of the base's work vehicles with its own smart pure electric vehicles, which has enabled the factory to achieve zero emissions on average about 15,000 km per year, reducing emissions by 822.5 tons per year.
In total, the total carbon reduction is about 10,042 tons, which is equivalent to the carbon emissions consumed by the broad-leaved forests of four Macao cities in one day.
Up to now, WM Motors has delivered more than 90,000 smart and pure electric vehicles to consumers in more than 200 cities in China, with a cumulative mileage of about 2.4 billion kilometers, helping to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 640,000 tons, equivalent to cultivating a 60,000-hectare forest.
WM W6
The future emission reduction space of China's automotive industry is still huge, but this requires the joint action of all participants in the automotive industry chain.
As an important component of the industrial chain, new energy vehicle companies not only release the green and low-carbon potential of the automotive industry, but also force the source to transform to low carbon.
While helping the "double carbon" goal, the new energy automobile industry also relies on green attributes to promote industrial upgrading, achieve curve overtaking, and strive to become a model for high-quality development of the manufacturing industry.