Earth Day Commitment: Lithium-ion Battery Accelerates Towards Zero-carbon Operation

On April 22, Earth Day 2025, Envision Power (AESC) announced that it would join the RE100 global green initiative and pledge that its global operations would be completely powered by renewable electricity by the end of fiscal 2025. Previously, LG and Samsung had also announced their joining of RE100 and made commitments. Envision Power has set a relatively leading timetable in the industry, making it the first company in the lithium-ion battery industry to commit to 100% renewable electricity. At the same time, this also reflects that lithium-ion battery companies are accelerating their transformation to sustainable operations under global climate goals and market pressures. RE100 is a global initiative jointly initiated by the Climate Group and the Carbon Disclosure Project, which aims to unite the world's most influential companies to jointly commit to 100% renewable electricity (by 2050 at the latest). So far, it has attracted more than 400 international companies from different industries and regions to participate.
The driving force behind this transformation comes from both policy and market. In China, the "dual carbon" goal is gradually being implemented into specific industrial policies, with stricter constraints on energy consumption and carbon emissions in industries such as battery manufacturing, and the mandatory implementation of national standards for carbon footprint accounting of battery products is also being promoted. Internationally, the EU's "New Battery Law" has a particularly wide impact. Its gradually effective carbon footprint limits, digital battery passports and other clauses directly link the operational carbon performance of battery companies with their market access qualifications. At the same time, market demand is also shaping the industry landscape. Mainstream automakers such as Volkswagen and BMW have set their own carbon neutrality goals and transmitted emission reduction requirements to battery suppliers. The capital market's increasing attention to corporate ESG performance has affected corporate financing costs and market valuations. The combination of policy mandatory and market selectivity has made operational decarbonization no longer an option, but a strategic necessity for corporate core competitiveness. Faced with pressure and opportunities, major global lithium battery manufacturers have formulated sustainable development strategies, set carbon neutrality goals covering operations and even the entire value chain, and explored diverse paths to achieve them. First, increasing the proportion of green electricity is a core industry measure. Envision Power has always been at the forefront of the zero-carbon transformation of the lithium battery industry and has performed outstandingly in this regard. In 2022, the company became the world's first battery company to achieve carbon neutrality in operation, and took the lead in launching the world's first batch of carbon-neutral power and energy storage batteries. Relying on Envision's pioneering "zero-carbon industrial park" model, Envision Power's factories in Ordos, Cangzhou and Extremadura, Spain can achieve 100% green electricity operation. For example, Envision Ordos Zero Carbon Industrial Park is an energy island based on the combination of wind power, photovoltaics, energy storage, and green hydrogen. 80% of the park's energy is directly supplied by local wind power and photovoltaics, and 20% is traded with the power grid, which can achieve 100% green zero-carbon energy supply. Based on this, the 10.5GWh Envision Power Ordos Battery Super Factory in the park has fully achieved green production and delivered high-quality battery products to global head OEMs and energy storage integration customers. CATL also enhances the application of green electricity by deploying wind and photovoltaic power generation facilities on a large scale and actively purchasing green electricity. By the end of 2024, the proportion of zero-carbon electricity in the company's core operations will increase to 74.51%, and it has 9 "zero-carbon factories". It is worth noting that CATL is actively participating in the green electricity trading innovation promoted by local governments in China. In the first batch of corporate green electricity direct trading pilots launched by Jiangsu Province in early 2025, CATL's Changzhou production base and its planned new production capacity in Yancheng were included. Such pilots aim to explore more effective green electricity consumption mechanisms to help battery companies better meet the low-carbon requirements of the international market, especially in response to the EU's carbon barriers. Other companies are also taking active action. EVE Energy has put into production the "60 Factory", which is known as the world's largest single carbon-neutral battery factory, with a total planned production capacity of more than 60GWh, and is equipped with large-scale photovoltaic power stations to support its zero-carbon operations. Honeycomb Energy has built a zero-carbon industrial park in Dazhou, Sichuan, which adopts the "source-grid-load-storage" integrated model, achieving 100% green electricity supply. Based on the "source-grid-load-storage-cloud" integrated solution, Xinwanda Smart Energy has established multiple zero-carbon parks in Guangdong, Zhejiang, Shandong and other places. Second, building a circular economy system is another consensus. Enterprises generally deploy waste battery recycling and material regeneration to establish a closed loop of "resources-materials-regeneration". For example, Honeycomb Energy and upstream material company Zhongwei New Materials jointly established Ivy Recycling Resources Company, which specializes in processing scrapped batteries and efficiently recovering key metals such as nickel and cobalt. Hubei Jinquan New Materials, a subsidiary of Yiwei Lithium Energy, has landed a waste lithium battery recycling production line with an annual processing capacity of 20,000 tons. Based on the construction of a complete closed loop from battery production, cascade utilization to recycling, CATL has increased the recycling rate of its industrial solid waste to over 96.5%. At the same time, it has also actively cooperated with international partners such as Volkswagen to establish a battery recycling pilot plant. Guoxuan High-tech launched a "2+20+N" recycling system, including 2 recycling production lines and 20 crushing plants, and plans to achieve full rooftop photovoltaic coverage of new factories by 2027. Envision Power also incorporates sustainability into product design to accelerate carbon emission reduction throughout the life cycle of new energy systems. In 2022 and 2023, it launched the world's first batch of "carbon neutral" power and energy storage batteries, and obtained the carbon neutrality certification (PAS2060) issued by TÜV SÜD, an internationally recognized certification body. Third, technological innovation and the application of digital tools provide strong support for zero carbon. EnOS, the intelligent IoT operating system and the "Ark" energy carbon management platform used by Envision Power, can analyze the carbon footprint of battery products throughout their life cycle, ensuring the transparency, traceability and certifiability of the product's carbon footprint. At the end of 2023, CATL's Times Carbon Chain System was put into operation. It is a platform that integrates carbon emission data collection, modeling, accounting, analysis and certification. Its database covers all links in the lithium battery industry value chain from raw ore mining to waste battery recycling. EVE Energy has jointly released the E-Carbon carbon accounting platform with SGS, an international certification body, to realize the intelligent management of carbon emission data. Fourth, supply chain collaborative carbon reduction and international layout are carried out simultaneously. Sinotruk not only set its own unit product emission reduction target (reduced by 34% compared to 2020), but also required its supply chain to reduce emissions by 10% each year. In 2024, Sunwoda held its first supply chain sustainable development conference, aiming to promote upstream and downstream suppliers to jointly transform green electricity and make carbon footprint transparent. In response to regulations and to be close to customers, many companies have built zero-carbon factories in Europe, including Envision Power, CATL's Spanish zero-carbon factory, Sinotruk's Portuguese zero-carbon factory, and EVE Energy's Hungarian green factory. Overall, although the carbon neutrality timetables and strategies of various companies are different, the trend is clear: deep operational decarbonization and building a transparent value chain are becoming the key for lithium battery companies to gain market access, ensure supply chain resilience, and win the trust of investors. Sustainability is increasingly becoming a yardstick for measuring the core competitiveness of companies.