São Paulo – The plant that Renault is going to open in Tangier, Morocco, in 2012, was designed to reduce carbon gas (CO2) emissions by 98%. According to the automaker’s press office, the rate is equivalent to 135,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. The reduction will take place through optimization of energy consumption and use of renewable energy. The remaining 2% of CO2 will be compensated through purchase of carbon credits or local renewable energy production.
According to the company, the plant’s environmental impact will be reduced to levels never reached before by a body and assembly facility. Aside from the measures already mentioned, the Renault plant in Tangiers will not flush out any wastewater into the environment, and water consumption will drop by 70% compared with the traditional production process. The measures were jointly developed with French multinational consultancy firm Veolia Environnement.
In order to reduce emissions by 98%, Renault and Veolia Environnement have rethought, for instance, the plant’s painting processes. The use of new technologies and energy recovery will reduce thermal power needs by 35%. There will also be other measures, such as burning of olive seeds grown locally in boilers and fuel made from eucalyptus wood, which was imported from southern Europe at first, and later grown in Morocco itself.
Renault’s unit in Tangiers will be geared towards vehicles based on the Logan model platform. It will have annual capacity for 170,000 vehicles, which should rise to 400,000 in the medium term. "This project was made possible by reworking many of the processes in the group’s brand new plant. It is perfectly in line with the environmental policy that Renault has been pursuing since 1995,” said the Renault group’s leader in the region, Jacques Chauvet, in a press release.
Renault has 35 factories and offices in 118 countries. The group employs 121,000 people and posted revenues of 31.9 million euros in 2009. A total of 2.3 million vehicles by the brand were sold worldwide last year.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
