CATL to Establish First Zero-Carbon Battery Plant
Leading Chinese power battery firm Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited (CATL) announced on Thursday that it will establish the world’s first zero-carbon battery factory in Yibin, Sichuan province. The company added, “The Yibin factory is only the starting point, and we will use the advantages of ‘lighthouse factory’ to achieve carbon neutrality in our bases across the world, one after another.”
The company said that it is not only committed to the electric empowerment of vehicles, but also strives to achieve carbon neutrality in the whole life cycle of batteries.
The firm already has many lithium battery projects in Yibin, such as Sichuan CATL and CATL-Geely (Sichuan) Power Battery Co., Ltd. Since 2019, the firm has increased investment in Yibin multiple times, including with the six-phase construction of a local power battery manufacturing base, with a total investment of over 30 billion yuan ($4.7 billion).
On December 30, 2021, CATL announced that it plans to invest in the construction of a new power battery manufacturing base (phases 7-10) in Yibin through its Sichuan subsidiary, with an investment of no more than 24 billion yuan. After the expansion, the total investment of the Yibin base will exceed 54 billion yuan.
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In addition, CATL signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the Sichuan provincial government in September 2020. According to the agreement, the company will lay out production and R&D bases in Yibin and other places within Sichuan, to build a whole industrial chain for lithium batteries. The two sides planned to cooperate comprehensively in the fields of next-generation batteries, new energy vehicles, autonomous driving, advanced energy storage and mobile energy management, jointly building a comprehensive base for the new energy industry.
According to the China Industry Technology Innovation Strategic Alliance for Electric Vehicles, the top 10 domestic manufacturers of EV power batteries in 2021 were CATL, BYD, China Lithium Battery Technology Co., Ltd. (CALB), Gotion High-Tech, LG New Energy, SVOLT, Tafeier Energy, EVE Energy, Farasis Energy and Sunwoda Electronic.
