General Motors Plans to Become Carbon Neutral by 2040

General Motors is one of the most famous vehicle manufacturers in the world. The company sells hundreds of thousands of gas-guzzling trucks as well as SUVs every year. However, General Motors wants to change the situation. According to the information provided by the company, it will be carbon neutral by 2040.

The automaker plans to reach this goal by removing emissions from all of its products. Moreover, when removing the emissions from the products are not possible, General Motors will purchase carbon credits to offset the pollution for which it is responsible. It is worth mentioning that, the company would not commit to ending its sale of gas-powered vehicles within its targeted time frame.

Interestingly, the company made this announcement one day after President Joe Biden signed a series of executive orders aimed at combating climate change. Hopefully, General Motors recently committed to spending $27 billion on electric as well as autonomous vehicles through 2025. As a reminder, the company wanted to spend $20 billion to fulfil that goal before the coronavirus pandemic. 

This is not the end of the story, according to the company, they will launch 30 new electric vehicles around the world during that time period. Importantly, more than two-thirds of the vehicles mentioned above will be available in North America.

General Motors and ecology

It is worth noting that, General Motors is the largest automaker in North America. This fact, once more underlines the importance of this decision. By 2030 the company will use 100% renewable energy to power its U.S. plants as well as facilities. In the case of global facilities, the company will use renewable energy by 2035.

Interestingly, these are often referred to as Scope 1 and 2 emissions. Moreover, Scope 3 emissions come from a company’s end-of-use products and supply chain and are arguably much harder to eliminate. However, the carmaker aims to achieve the eradication of Scope 3 emissions. These make up 75% of the company’s total carbon output, by 2040.

Hopefully, famous airlines such as United, Delta, and JetBlue are also willing to eliminate all of their emissions over the next several decades. Companies are ready to spend millions of dollars on protecting the environment. It won’t be easy to reach this goal. However, more and more companies around the world are willing to take part in this process. As can be seen from General Motors’ example, it is important to come with a plan on how to reach this goal.