International. Together with E.ON, Audi is building a solar power park on the roofs of the two logistics centers of its plant in Győr, Hungary, covering approximately 160,000 square meters.
This will create Europe's largest PV system installed in a building at Audi's plant in Győr. It will have a maximum output of 12 megawatts. Construction work will begin in August 2019 and renewable energy generation will begin early next year.
"We are committed to the economic use of resources and therefore want to keep the environmental impact of our production as low as possible. Approximately 70 percent of Audi Hungaria's heat requirements are already covered by climate-neutral geothermal energy. Our goal is to have a completely CO2-neutral plant operation in the future. With the construction of the solar cell park, we are now taking another step to achieve this in terms of power supply," said Achim Heinfling, Chairman of the Board of Management of Audi Hungaria Zrt.
As part of the joint project with E.ON Hungaria, Audi is providing the roof areas of the two logistics centers, each with approximately 80,000 square meters, for the construction of the solar power park. This is where Europe's largest rooftop solar plant is being built. E.ON will put into operation the park, which consists of 35,000 solar cells, and will continue to operate it, with an annual production of more than 9.5 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity. This corresponds to the annual energy requirements of 5,000 homes. Thanks to green electricity from regenerative sources, around 6,000 tonnes less carbon dioxide will be released into the air.
"We are constantly working to achieve greater sustainability across the value chain," said Peter Kössler, Member of the Board of Management for Production and Logistics at Audi AG. "By 2030, we want all our production sites to be climate neutral. The use of renewable energy is an important lever for this."
Karsten Wildberger, E.ON Board Member, adds: "Intelligent energy management is indispensable for companies that want to achieve their sustainability goals. We help customers like Audi to combine climate protection with their business, and thus create value for their customers and our society. "
In addition, Audi AG, together with its partners, is committed to incorporating resources in closed cycles and reusing them as fully as possible. "We were the first premium manufacturer to measure and certify our CO2 footprint in 2014. Since then, we have been constantly working to reduce it further," said Rüdiger Recknagel, Head of Environmental Protection at Audi AG. "We are also installing new technologies in all our plants to reduce our water consumption, avoid air pollution and improve recycling."
Source: Audi.
