Commercial vehicle manufacturer MAN Truck & Bus has reduced the CO2 emissions of its production sites by more than one quarter. The sites emitted around 29% less CO2 in 2018 than in the base year of 2008. This means that MAN has reached the goal it had set itself two years earlier than was originally planned: in fact, the MAN Climate Strategy, which was adopted back in 2011, provided for a 25% reduction by 2020 and not any earlier. Over the past years, MAN Truck & Bus has invested around €40 million in reducing the CO2 generated by its production network, cutting the emissions of this greenhouse gas by over 100,000 tons a year – equivalent to those produced by a small town.

Combined heat and power plants at multiple production sites, a large photovoltaic system in South Africa, new lighting concepts, energy-saving air conditioning using well water – this extraordinary achievement has been the result of a large number of measures.

“This is a huge success that our project team has driven forward with exceptional commitment across the board – and we are proud of it. As an industrial player, we have a responsibility to protect the environment and combat climate change. We fulfill this responsibility with the help of targeted measures as part of our Climate Strategy,” says Michael Kobriger, Executive Board member for Production and Logistics at MAN Truck & Bus.

To do this, the company focused on a systematic approach. As well as producing energy within its own plants and deploying systematic energy management, the desired improvements were also attributable to MAN making its production process more energy efficient. With a view to 2025 and 2030, MAN is currently working on new targets to lower its sites’ CO2 emissions further.

This is what the development looks like in absolute terms: while MAN production plants still emitted around 374,600 tons of CO2 in 2008, this figure was only 265,710 in 2018. This is equivalent to a reduction of 108,809 tons of CO2 every year – the amount produced by a small town. Notable mentions in the yearly roundup go to the combined heat and power plants at the production sites in Munich (minus 9,500 tons of CO2) and Starachowice, Poland (minus 4,000 tons of CO2), as well as the photovoltaic system at the first climate-neutral production plant in Pinetown, South Africa. This plant cuts CO2 emissions down by 680 tons every year and supplies renewable energy to the entire local production network.