[Teruo Ikehara's monocular and compound eyes] Toyota has accumulated 18 years of LCA, aiming to achieve carbon neutrality at all plants by 2035

Manufacturing sites are leading among the three areas of the "Zero CO2 Challenge"

Toyota Motor has achieved carbon neutrality (substantially zero greenhouse gas emissions) at all plants in Japan and overseas 2035 from 2050 to 2035. It is likely to be the earliest realization among major automakers, not only in Japan but also overseas.

The power of the manufacturing site with the Toyota Production System (TPS) as its backbone is the driving force, but the perspective of life cycle assessment (LCA), which has been incorporated into product development and business activities from early on, is also a foundation on which the company can take the lead. It's becoming

CPO (Chief Production Officer) Masamichi Okada, Executive Officer and CPO (Chief Production Officer), recently gave a presentation to the media on "manufacturing" and said, "We will take on various challenges with the goal of making our factories carbon-neutral by 2035. We will continue to do so,” he said. CPO Okada also presented examples of improvements in processes that emit large amounts of CO2 (carbon dioxide), such as painting and casting.

Toyota announced in 2015 "Environmental Challenge 2050", which has set a policy to challenge zero CO2 emissions in three fields: "LCA of products", "new vehicles" and "factories". This time, the company has indicated that it will soon be possible to achieve zero emissions at its factories. We review these three challenges in our annual environmental report, and last year's environmental report stated that we had already converted all of the electric energy used in our factories in Europe, such as France and the United Kingdom, to renewable energy. I have made it public.

From 2003, LCA data has been displayed in catalogs such as the Prius.

The carbon neutrality of the manufacturing industry will, of course, be evaluated through the LCA of the product, including factory operations. In the case of cars, the target is greenhouse gas emissions throughout the life of a vehicle, from development to manufacturing of materials, parts, and vehicles, distribution, driving, maintenance, and disposal. Even if an electric vehicle (EV) does not emit CO2 while driving, LCA does not make sense if the battery manufacturing factory that consumes a lot of electricity is old and dependent on fossil fuel energy.

I first heard the term LCA in the automotive industry around the beginning of this century, when I was interviewing Toyota about the environment. It was introduced as a method of environmental impact assessment, and LCA-based data was first published in the catalogs of the second-generation Prius and the 12th-generation Crown, which went on sale 18 years ago in 2003. This was a graphical representation of index comparisons with conventional equivalent models for five substances, including not only CO2 but also NOx (nitrogen oxides).

In 2005, we introduced an evaluation system called "Eco-VAS" (Eco-Vehicle Assessment System) to the development department to help reduce the environmental impact of LCA. As a result, we have built a groundbreaking system in which the chief engineer is responsible for setting load reduction targets for all new models.

To compete in the race until 2050, legs are more important than beautiful faces

After that, the listing in the catalog has evolved, and now it is common to show the outline of the "Environmental Challenge 2050" along with the model of the car in question. CO2 emissions at each stage of LCA are graphed. Each stage is categorized into "Material manufacturing", "Vehicle manufacturing", "Driving", "Maintenance", and "Disposal" and graphed, showing a comparison between the models in the catalog and similar Toyota models. ing.

CO2 emissions from Toyota's own factories are included in the "vehicle manufacturing" category. In the case of the company's hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), roughly speaking, emissions from vehicle manufacturing account for just over 10% of the overall LCA. It is by no means large, but at least it is poised to reduce this to zero by 2035. Toyota's ability to make improvements on the shop floor, as well as the fact that the concept of LCA has permeated the company from an early stage, has been the driving force behind this plant's initiative toward carbon neutrality. Such accumulation can be said to be the “real world potential” in manufacturing, which President Akio Toyoda often emphasizes.

In the race of automakers to achieve carbon neutrality, the question of how many EVs will be introduced to the market by what year is very colorful and easy to attract attention. However, since the figures are in a long-term range, even among the world's major companies, there are rampant "low-up figures" that raise questions about their feasibility. If we compare the LCA of a car to the human body, the vehicle such as an EV is the face itself, and the factory is like the legs. No matter how beautiful your face is, if you don't have well-trained legs, you won't be able to keep running in the race until 2050.