Suzuki Buys RE From ReNew Power For Indian Plant

Suzuki Motor has begun to buy wind and solar power for its plant in Gujarat from ReNew Power as part of its drive to cut about 6% of the Japanese automaker’s global carbon dioxide emissions. As Suzuki’s biggest market, India accounted for about 60% of its global production of four-wheeled vehicles last fiscal year and therefore will be crucial to meeting the automaker’s decarbonization goals.

According to a statement released by the company on Thursday, Suzuki began procuring electricity in May from a 17.6-megawatt solar-wind hybrid facility run by ReNew Power, built exclusively for the automaker. This was the first time the Suzuki group’s used an offsite corporate power purchase agreement. The arrangement will reduce CO2 emissions by about 59,000 tons per year, the automaker claimed.

Having installed 500 kilowatts of solar power capacity at the Gujarat plant in 2018, Suzuki Motor expanded solar generation at a production site in the northern Indian state of Haryana to 26.3 MW last September. The company aims to cut emissions per vehicle produced by 25% from fiscal 2016 levels by fiscal 2025.

The Indian auto sector has moved decisively towards renewable energy in recent months, with almost all the leading firms taking steps to clean up power sourcing in the past two years.

Suzuki Motor interestingly has been resisting the push towards EVs, repeatedly stressing that it did not believe the market is ready for them. It has instead pushed hybrids as an option. Again, in the past two months, the form finally acknowledged the growth of the EV segment, and announced its own plans to roll out EVs by 2025-26.  As the market leader with anniver 50 percent share of the total market, hopes are high that the firm will do to EVs what it did in the auto segment, namely, introduce smaller, affordable and efficient EVs .