CB BureauIf you hear of a car manufacturer striving to ‘save the environment’, you will most likely imagine that it is investing in green technology that saves fuel or is cutting down on its fleet of gas guzzlers in the market. Yet, if it is Lamborghini – who only makes supercars with double-digit cylinder counts, displacing over 5.0 litres to produce an excess of 600 horsepower – you will be hard-pressed to apply the term ‘green vehicle’.
So, when Team CauseBecause received a media release stating that the company had gone carbon-neutral, we scratched our heads and tried understanding what they meant. There had to be something to read in-between the lines. In recent times, when the company had showed a ‘hybrid sports car’ concept at auto fairs but opted to build an SUV instead, we were wondering how it defined being carbon-neutral.
Last week the Italian automaker opened its new Trigeneration Plant. No, it is not a car-assembly facility spanning multiple eras of production but a power plant. Built on the site of the company’s headquarters in Sant’Agata Bolognese, the plant will generate its electricity, heating and cooling from the same source of natural gas. The plant has a potential capacity of generating 1.2 megawatts, and will be capable of generating over 25,000 MWh every year – enough energy to power all the houses in Sant’Agata, the otherwise sleepy town that Lamborghini shares with about 7,000 residents.
The company’s official release claims that the clean-burning facility is estimated to cut out 820 tons of CO2 every year, and by 2017 is slated to run on biofuel to raise that figure to 5,600 tonnes per year. That’s all very well, but Team CauseBecause has been wondering who this communication is meant for. Is Lamborghini now trying to attract people who eat free-range chickens and want to be assured that their buying habits fit in with their environmental conscience? Or is it only giving a Lamborghini buyer another Facebook update: ‘so what if my Lamborghini pollutes, its factory does not…’
While Googling for the company’s objective, we found a few quotes from Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann from the roundtable discussion that happened at the opening of the Trigeneration Plant. Winkelmann stated: ‘If we are going to do the things only to please the customer, we would not be here anymore. We are not here to please a single customer. We are here to pass this territory unharmed to the next generation. It would be ridiculous if you would say we are going to save the world. What we’re saying is, exactly, that everyone has to take responsibility in the territory where he’s living.
‘If you have an approach which is 360 degrees of reducing the emissions for the cars while maintaining the DNA of the brand while, on the other hand, doing all that is possible to reduce emissions at the plant, I think this is something which is recognized by those who have an idea of what is going on in this world.’
Interestingly, looking at its promised efficiency, the Italian government subsidized the installation of the plant at about 20 to 25 per cent, while Lamborghini has shouldered the rest of the investment itself.
The plant, however, is only the latest in a series of measures Lamborghini has undertaken to reduce its carbon footprint. There’s a new district heating system that pipes in hot water from a biogas cogeneration plant about four miles away – energy that would otherwise have been lost and whose recuperation is said to cut another 1,800 tonnes of CO2 per year. The company installed over 160,000 square feet of solar panels to cut another 1,000 tonnes of C02 per year, and built a park nearby with 10,000 oak trees to offset its own carbon emissions and research reforestation methods.
All these measures form part of a commitment on Lamborghini’s part to cut its carbon emissions by 25 per cent by this year. The company has achieved key environmental certifications from the European Union’s Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS), from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and now from Det Norske Veritas Germanischer Lloyd (DNV GL) – making Lamborghini the first company to be certified as carbon-neutral by the Norwegian-German standards organization.
So, while driving a supercar may not be the most environmentally conscious decision, Lamborghini as a company apparently seems eager to do its part.