Not content with producing one of Europe’s most popular electric vehicles, Nissan have announced that their Sunderland plant will be even more sustainable in the future.

The Japanese company were one of the first to consider renewable energy to build their cars when they launched wind turbines at their factory in the north east in 2005, they followed that up with a solar farm in 2016 and have now announced plans to expand that solar energy by 37,000 panels which would allow the plant to produce 20 per cent of all their onsite energy through renewables.

Alan Johnson, Vice President Manufacturing at Nissan Sunderland, said: “Renewables have already made a big difference to our business and we continue to look for ways to make the manufacturing process more sustainable.

“As our products made in Sunderland become increasingly electrified, our manufacturing operations are an important part of the ecosystem that will take us to carbon neutrality.”

If approved, the total output for renewables at the Nissan plant would be 32MW and would go some way to meeting the company’s ambition of achieve carbon neutrality across all operations by 2050.

Nissan are already leading the way in EV production, with 180,000 LEAFs sold across Europe, their ambition is to produce electric only vehicles by 2030. The LEAF alone has prevented 2.5 million tonnes of CO2 from entering the atmosphere every year.

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