München – BMW wants to operate its car factory in Debrecen, Hungary, exclusively with green electricity.
The “plant in Hungary should completely do without fossil fuels,” said CEO Oliver Zipse on Wednesday at the BMW general meeting in Munich. According to him, this makes it the world’s first automobile plant to be operated without fossil fuels.
The foundation stone for the plant in Hungary will be laid on June 1, and 26 months later the first pre-series cars of the all-electric New Class will roll off the assembly line there. Most of the electricity required for production is generated directly on the factory premises, “for the rest we use 100 percent renewable energy sources,” said Zipse.
The decision not to use gas at the Debrecen plant goes back to the goal of reducing CO2 emissions in production and is independent of the current supply situation, said a company spokeswoman. But that also makes economic sense: “The concept ensures price stability and security of supply.”
So far, BMW has needed gas in its car factories primarily for the operation of combined heat and power plants and for the ovens in the paint shop. Last year, the group consumed 3.5 million megawatt hours of natural gas worldwide, out of a total of 6.5 million megawatt hours of energy. The majority of the CO2 emissions of 766,153 tons came from the combustion of natural gas in the combined heat and power plants and paint shops.