Last week BMW announced that it has an audacious plan to make sure all the energy used for its manufacturing needs will come from renewable sources. While we all immediately think of wind mills and solar panels whenever someone mentions renewable energy, some of the power sources that BMW may be using moving forward might surprise you. According to a new report, cow manure may be one such source, for example.
BMW has 31 production facilities spread across 14 countries and the climate can vary quite a lot, meaning solar panels, wind mills and even hydroplants may not be the optimum choice in certain scenarios. In this regard, Automotive News reports that BMW will have to resort to unusual sources to meet its high, self-set demands in terms of CO2 emissions for its plants. In South Africa, for example, a biomass plant will provide electricity sourced from cow manure and chicken droppings.
At the same time, in the US, at the Spartanburg plant, the Germans use methane gas from a landfill near their plant. All of this will be in an extreme effort to find about 1 terrawatt of power from renewable sources, the average amount needed for BMW’s plants to run over a year. That’s roughly the same as what 222,000 homes consume over the same period of time.
BMW will also be looking to gather more energy than it does currently from solar power, with the help of wider solar panel fields, similar to what Tesla wants to do for its Gigafactory in Nevada. The end result show show a drastic cut in the CO2 footprint BMW cars, which is not only a regulated target but also a self-imposed one for the Bavarian car maker.
