Volvo Cars announced a new climate-related commitment, unveiling a new aim to reduce CO2 emissions per car by 75% by 2030, compared to a 2018 baseline.

The company also announced that it has joined the First Movers Coalition (FMC) to use its purchasing power towards clean technologies to help support the shift to near-zero emission aluminum. Launched at the COP26 climate conference, the FMC is a coalition of companies committed to creating early markets for clean technologies addressing hard-to-abate sectors through advanced purchase commitments to send strong market signals enabling the scaling and commercialization of clean technologies including near-zero carbon steel, aluminum, shipping, trucking and aviation, as well as advanced carbon dioxide removal solutions.

Jonas Otterheim, Head of Climate Action, at Volvo Cars, said:

“We have previously used the COP summits to push collective climate action and COP28 will be no different. What we and other like-minded companies are trying to do is develop and scale up transformational technologies to decarbonize sometimes ancient industrial processes.”

Volvo’s new commitment builds on the company’s existing climate goals, which include achieving climate neutrality by 2040, and reducing CO2 emissions per car by 40% between 2018 and 2025. The company stated that to date it has reduced CO2 emissions per car by 19% compared with 2018.

Volvo Cars has also pledged to sell only fully electric cars across its global portfolio by 2030. Through the first three quarters of 2023, fully electric cars made up 16% of the company’s sales. Volvo added that it will produce its last-ever diesel-powered car early next year, and that it has stopped R&D investments in new internal combustion engines.

The company highlighted several of the key initiatives it is pursuing in order to achieve its climate goals, including collaborating with Swedish steel producer SSAB to explore near-zero emission, high-quality steel for the automotive industry, with plans to use zero emission sheet steel from the company in one of its car programmes by 2026, recently reaching 100% climate neutral electricity across each of its plants globally, and switching from fossil fuels to biofuel for 86% of its intercontinental ocean freight.

Javier Varela, Chief Operating Officer and Deputy CEO of Volvo Cars, said:

“The world urgently needs to come together and act, to avoid the worst effects of climate change. We’re committed to doing our part and we call on corporate and political leaders around the globe to also do theirs.”