It's a thorny subject: can a company that makes only cars with 600 hp and above think about sustainability? At Ferrari they've been trying since the '90s. And Lamborghini? At Sant'Agata, there's no shortage of initiatives.
2020 is approaching: by that date the EU climate and energy package aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent, bring energy savings to 20 per cent and increase the share of renewable sources to 20 per cent. The average emissions of a new car will have to fall to 95 grams of CO2. And hefty "fines" will rain down for every excess gram of CO2.
Quite a challenge for a company like Lamborghini, which produces "only" cars with F1-level performance — and proportional emissions… By the end of the year, there is a commitment to reduce emissions from models in the line-up by 25 per cent (no mean feat when you consider the Aventador, a car that reaches 100 km/h in 2.8 seconds and hits a top speed of 356 km/h). Will it be enough?
And so, piece by piece, Lamborghini has been working for years to put together its sustainability puzzle — and after the ISO 50001 certification obtained in 2011, it is doing so by inaugurating new trigeneration and district heating plants, two of the main projects enabling the carmaker to achieve CO2 neutral certification (issued by DNV GL), with the goal of reducing and offsetting, by the end of the year, the emissions produced at the Sant'Agata Bolognese plant.
"Sustainability is part of our corporate objectives and represents a strong assumption of responsibility towards our stakeholders and the territory in which we operate on a daily basis", explained Stephan Winkelmann, president and CEO of Automobili Lamborghini. "Our goal is to keep the plant CO2 neutral even after the expansion that will take place in the coming years with the introduction of Lamborghini's third model", alluding to the Urus, the first SUV (and the first hybrid) in the brand's history, expected in 2018.
The trigeneration plant makes it possible to produce electrical, thermal and cooling energy using natural gas. It has an installed capacity of 1.2 MW and can produce approximately 9,800 MWh per year. By 2017, this plant will be powered by biogas, so as to further reduce CO2 emissions by up to 5,600 tonnes every year.
As mentioned, Lamborghini's (challenging) journey towards sustainability has passed through several other milestones in recent years: from 15,000 square metres of photovoltaic panels to a cycling mobility development project with Bologna. Then, in 2011, the Parco Lamborghini, created in the municipality of Sant'Agata Bolognese in collaboration with the universities of Bologna, Bolzano and Munich; the planting of over 10,000 oak trees across an area of approximately seven hectares also serves to monitor and better understand, in the years ahead, the relationships between density, forest productivity, the capacity to capture CO2 and to maintain biodiversity in relation to climate.
