Sustainable right from the start: Audi’s CO₂ program

Consistent electrification of the vehicle fleet will help the company achieve its targets. But it must make the right adjustments to fully leverage the potential – emissions can be cut particularly during manufacture. And the energy revolution also plays a decisive role: The use of green electricity vastly improves the life-cycle assessment of electric cars.

The switch to electric mobility generates most of the CO₂ emissions in the supply chain. Here and in the downstream production processes, almost a quarter of all CO₂ emissions will be produced at Audi in 2025. To combat this, the company initiated a year ago a “CO₂ program” in the supply chain that envisages cost-cutting measures across all levels. In 30 workshops, Audi together with suppliers has so far defined 50 measures that help cut CO₂ right from the start, such as using renewable energy sources, recycling processes, or closing material loops. In this way, 1.2 tons of CO₂ per vehicle could be saved in future. In particular, energy-intensive materials such as steel or aluminum offer lots of savings potential.

The material aluminum goes back many years at Audi and is one of the company’s core competences. Audi was the first automaker to use the material for its lightweight construction models. The benefits of the material are obvious: Aluminum doesn’t rust, is easy to machine, and, most importantly of all, it makes cars light. The downside is that the primary production of aluminum requires very large quantities of energy and usage of natural resources. It takes around 15 megawatt hours of power to produce a ton of aluminum. Roughly about the same as a two-person household consumes in five years.

Audi is conscious of its responsibility in this respect. In 2013, the brand with the Four Rings became a member of the Aluminium Stewardship Initiative (ASI). The ASI developed a global standard for the handling of aluminum, which lays down environment-related and social criteria along the value chain. In 2018, Audi received the Performance Standard certificate from the ASI for its responsible use of aluminum for the battery housing on the Audi e-tron. 20 percent of its body is incidentally made of aluminum.

To use even less primary aluminum in manufacturing in future, Audi launched the Aluminium Closed Loop three years ago. This ensures that high-grade aluminum scrap is not sold for profit on the scrap metal market, but is fed back into the material loop. Excess aluminum offcuts from the press shop are returned to the producer, where they are recycled and supplied back to Audi in the next step as secondary aluminum. The recycling rate is almost 100 percent. Compared with primary aluminum, up to 95 percent less energy is consumed during production.

The closed loop should gradually be transferred to other press shops in the Group, thus systematically promoting the use of secondary material. Apart from aluminum and steel, materials in particular for the battery offer great potential. An initial research project tested a closed loop for recycling cobalt and nickel.

Audi is looking closely at the circular economy and is showing that the system works. Projects such as the Aluminium Closed Loop contribute decisively to decarbonizing the company and conserving more resources. Reuse can substantially reduce the demand for new raw materials. Electric mobility is decisive here, as compared with conventional drives the closed material loops help significantly reduce the use of critical raw materials and hopefully also help push back the Earth Overshoot Day in the calendar.