General Motors, America’s largest automaker, plans to be carbon neutral by 2040. That includes not just the impact of the vehicles it builds, but of building them.
“To address emissions from its own operations, GM will source 100 percent renewable energy to power its U.S. sites by 2030 and global sites by 2035,” the company announced. It plans to continue to invest in carbon offsets for any carbon emissions it can’t eliminate.
The commitment doesn’t include requiring that its suppliers be carbon neutral by that date. Instead, GM said, it “has worked with some of its largest suppliers to create a sustainability council to share best practices, learn from each other and create new standards for the industry. In addition to the council’s work, GM is collaborating with suppliers to set ambitious targets for the supply chain to reduce emissions, increase transparency, and source more sustainable materials.”
Recent years have seen old antagonists join together toward environmental progress. GM’s plan is the product of work with the Environmental Defense Fund. EDF President Fred Krupp hailed the partnership. He said, “EDF and GM have had some important differences in the past, but this is a new day in America — one where serious collaboration to achieve transportation electrification, science-based climate progress, and equitably shared economic opportunity can move our nation forward.”
30 EVs by 2025
The company had already announced plans for many electric vehicles (and even altered its once-iconic logo as part of an electrification push) but today’s announcement added some specifics to that trend. “GM will offer 30 all-electric models globally by mid-decade and 40 percent of the company’s U.S. models offered will be battery electric vehicles by the end of 2025. The company is investing $27 billion in electric and autonomous vehicles in the next five years – up from the $20 billion planned before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the company said.
GM plans to work with EDF, EVgo, and other organizations to build out the nation’s charging infrastructure. The hopes are to make it as easy to recharge an EV as it is to refuel a gasoline-powered car.
The company doesn’t plan to completely give up on the internal combustion engine, however. Future gasoline-powered vehicles, it said, will feature “fuel economy improvement technologies, such as Stop/Start, aerodynamic efficiency enhancements, downsized boosted engines, more efficient transmissions and other vehicle improvements, including mass reduction and lower rolling resistance tires.”
