Volkswagen is building its green energy portfolio to achieve caron reduction beyond the manufacture of EVs and to support a wider view of sustainability including the use of offsetting ‘grey’ charging.

“We plan to step up our commitment in the field of renewable energies each year in line with the development in sales of ID. models,” said Andreas Walingen, CSO and head of strategy of the Volkswagen Passenger Cars brand. “Through the large-scale development of European wind and solar farms, we intend to support our customers in the region in their efforts to always use their ID. vehicles in a net carbon-neutral way. This shows that our commitment to sustainability goes far beyond the electrification of vehicles.”

The company is pushing forward the development of renewable energies throughout Europe. Volkswagen is currently engaged in a total of 26 green power projects in nine European countries, including 18 photovoltaic plants and eight wind farms in Spain, Sweden, Finland, Portugal, the UK, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland. Since 2021, the green power projects supported have fed a total of 3TWh of electricity to the European power grid.

In 2024 the projects generated a total of about 1.1TWh of green power, corresponding to the electricity demand of the Volkswagen ID. fleet on European roads currently not covered by renewable power. Green charging is not always available, with a 2023 study from the Fraunhofer Institute showing that renewable electricity accounts for only 61 per cent of the power used for charging and the share of ‘grey’ electricity currently used is about 39 per cent. Through the green power projects, Volkswagen is shifting this share to carbon-neutral over a period of 10 years, assuming that each vehicle travels 200,000 km.

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