"It's a real tsunami," says Patricia Domínguez, head of quality and environmental sustainability at our company. "The need to achieve clean mobility forces us to face an enormous technological and organizational transformation. But only in this way is it possible to achieve very ambitious objectives that are set by the climate emergency in general and, at a specific level, by the automotive sector itself".

Ambitious European targets

After years in which the motor industry has been focused on optimizing its business model, it now faces a huge challenge: overcoming the fossil fuel era. So what began years ago with warnings and continued with consumer demands has led the European Union to set itself these goals:

• The goal is to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions by up to 55% by 2030 (from 1990 levels)
• The goal is to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.

And, landing these objectives on vehicles, the challenge means:

• By 2030, the EU wants 30 million zero-emission cars to be on our roads.
• And from 2035 onwards, new cars coming onto the market will not be allowed to emit any CO2 at all. Without exception.

But it is one thing to propose (and even legislate) and another to manufacture these cars of the future, taking on the technical challenges they pose for the entire value chain.

Three plans to bring innovations to market

Industrias Alegre's response has been to innovate in order to offer the market products that help to achieve these objectives. To this end, we have organized our work in three plans of our own:

• Lighter Plan, in which we investigate all possible formulas to help lighten the vehicle. This includes everything from new design solutions to research into alternative materials, such as the composite we recently presented in this report, which is perfect for use in electric vehicle battery casings.
• Eco Plan, focused on incorporating cleaner materials and processes into our manufacturing processes. In this area, our efforts are focused on recycled plastics (more information here), new composites and new processes, such as the one that allows us to dispense with paint in different parts (more details here).
• Value Plan, focused on offering high value-added solutions for the vehicles of the future, ranging from battery components and new door panels to intelligent surfaces that are born from in-mold electronics.

Although these are three distinct lines of work, we cannot treat them as watertight compartments, but as spaces that are in constant relationship because the objective is common: to provide our customers with products that enable them to achieve zero-emission mobility more quickly.

Beyond parts: measuring our carbon footprint

These proposals are of enormous importance to Industrias Alegre. And yet, sustainability goes beyond that for us and directly affects the way we organize our own production. To this end, we are working on measuring and reducing our carbon footprint.

Domínguez, our sustainability expert, explains the steps the company is taking: "The OEMS we work for have set very important targets, seeking reduction values for 2030 and 2035 of up to 40% compared to 2018 and 2019. And that has led us to monitor every aspect of our production."

To measure the carbon footprint, Industrias Alegre is using a tool that in the near future will take into account variables ranging from the origin of the energy consumed to the type of raw materials and the amount of defective parts coming out of our machines. First measure. Then improve... and, of course, demand improvements in this regard from our own suppliers as well.

At the moment, the team is working on the 2023 measurements in order to be able to pass the corresponding audit by the end of the year. "In this way," continues our expert, "we are anticipating an obligation that these large customers will impose on us from 2025 onwards.

Sustainability as a strategic element

Obviously, as Domínguez explains, we are talking about a chain of pressure: The big OEMS set targets that they pass on to all the companies that collaborate directly with them; and then each of us takes care of exerting the necessary pressure on our network of suppliers.

This is how sustainability has gone from being a nice word to becoming an element of value for large industry. At Industrias Alegre we are still drawing up our road map for the coming years," says our expert, "but the company has long since defined that this aspect is one of the driving forces of our corporate strategic plan.

There is no plan B for the planet. But neither is there an alternative for the industry of the future.

Photo Skylar Kang (Pexels)