中国气候变化信息网 China Climate Change Info-Net

By mid-October, a sting of cold air was already felt in Changchun, capital of Northeast China's Jilin province. It gave people extra pleasure to be in a warm house and see a school of colorful koi fish swimming happily in a pond, chasing after their meal.

The house was Audi's assembly workshop in FAW-Volkswagen's Changchun plant, where the German automaker's first electric model, the e-tron, will be locally produced. Interesting enough, the water the fish swim in is the workshop's processed waste water, which has been made clean and safe.

The Changchun plant is one of the joint venture's most environmentally friendly manufacturing facilities.

Executives at the workshop explained the facility is strict about water use, treatment and disposal.

It does not use water from rivers or lakes, and it tries to make the most of every possible drop to cut water consumption.

It also processes waste water in strict accordance with the country's regulations, recycling as much as possible, and never discharging it into natural waterways.

The facility's environmentally-friendly efforts are not limited to water. In the No 2 assembly workshop alone, last year's electricity savings reached 3.49 million kilowatts. It has also improved the paint technology to make the process more environmentally friendly.

Sustainable development is a pillar of the joint venture's plan, which is part of Volkswagen AG and Audi AG's strategies to promote green growth.

Audi aims to reduce vehicle-specific CO2 emissions by 30 percent by 2025, compared to 2015. In the long term, the premium carmaker is pursuing CO2-neutral mobility and aims to be climate-neutral by 2050.

Gaby-Luise Wuest, president of Audi China, said "Audi in China is also committing to being consistently sustainable".

"Together with our partner FAW-VW, it is our goal to bring CO2 emissions of our Chinese production sites to zero by 2030," she said. "By achieving this, we will do our part to contribute to halting climate change." FAW-Volkswagen has been preparing the plant for the introduction of Audi's electric vehicles, which have the best carbon footprint of all drive systems.

The brand's first electric model, the e-tron, will roll off the assembly line in 2020 in the very shop where the koi are swimming. The imported model, with a mileage range of 470 kilometers, will hit the market later this year.

FAW-Volkswagen has made green growth a priority of its long-term development plan. In its Strategy 2025 initiative, the joint venture vows to improve the performance of five environmental aspects by 43 percent compared to 2015.

The five aspects are energy use, CO2 emissions, water use, volatile organic compounds and waste disposal.

Liu Yigong, president of FAW-Volkswagen, said he expects Audi to become a leading player in China's new energy vehicle market by 2025, with 30 percent of sales in the country comprising such vehicles.

"We make every effort to ensure green production and offer environmentally friendly products, thus realizing overall sustainable development," Liu said.

Besides the Audi e-tron, which is being produced in Changchun, another electric model, the Q2L e-tron SUV, is being produced at the joint venture's plant in Foshan, in South China's Guangdong province.

Zhang Shuo, head of FAW-Volkswagen's Foshan branch, said the 33.3 billion yuan facility was built as a green and model manufacturing plant.

One example of green efforts can be seen in the plant's photovoltaic project, which uses a 109,960-square-meter roof to generate electricity.

Through last month, it had supplied 36.27 million kilowatt hours for the plant, which was equivalent of cutting CO2 emissions by 36,160 metric tons.

"We have implemented a lot of environmentally friendly features, ranging from wastewater and waste gas treatment to heat recovery in the paint workshop and solar road lamps. The results are much better than China's national standards," Zhang said.

The plant has gone through changes for electric vehicle production as well. Besides building a battery workshop, the stamping workshop's six-step process has been cut by one to be fit for the MEB platform.

The MEB platform is Audi parent company Volkswagen AG's all-new platform that is only for electric vehicles. Zhang said the assembly workshop has cut the number of work stations from 195 to 175 by improving the production process.

"While the production capacity remains the same, energy consumption has been cut and the process is more efficient now," he said.

Audi's efforts to cut its carbon footprint are reflected not only in the production process, but also in product development. Globally, Audi has unveiled a roadmap for an electric future, and plans to deliver 30 new electrified models in this range by 2025, 20 of which will be all-electric.

Audi's first electric model, the e-tron, is expected to be produced at the automaker's assembly workshop in FAW-Volkswagen's Changchun plant in Jilin province. Photos provided to China Daily