BMW recently announced that it will expand its energy investment to reduce its reliance on traditional fuels. Earlier, it also stated that it will continue to explore solar, geothermal and hydrogen energy technologies to buildThe world's first automobile factory that operates entirely without relying on traditional fuels.
According to BMW's Director of Production, Milan Nedelkjovic, BMW plans to increase the proportion of energy generated by traditional fuels by adding solar panels and, in conjunction with German government initiatives, delivering hydrogen to its Leipzig plant. Outside of Germany, plans are underway to install large-scale solar power and geothermal energy at its Debrecen, Hungary plant, completely eliminating its reliance on traditional fuels.
Natural gas accounted for 54% of BMW's energy use last year, and the proportion used by the entire German automotive industry was 37%. Recently, affected by the Ukraine-Russia war, Germany is currently subject to the natural gas embargo policy from Russia, which has significantly affected its automotive industry. This has become a shock in addition to the shortage of semiconductor components, and therefore BMW plans to seek other alternative energy sources.
However, compared to wind and solar power conversion methods, geothermal energy can obviously drive more stable power conversion, but the construction cost is relatively high. Therefore, most industries currently still focus on introducing solar and wind power generation, which have relatively mature technologies. However, there are still many industries that hope to invest in geothermal and hydrogen power generation to obtain higher power conversion efficiency.
