• Read all the interviews in the series 'The faces of the green transition'

José María Galofré

, CEO of Volvo Car Spain, explains how his sector has influenced climate change and what he can do now to fight against it.

The Swedish manufacturer ensures that in 2030 they will only sell electric cars and in 2025, 50% will be pure electric and the rest will be hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles.

Is man to blame for climate change? Since the creation of the steam engine, man has transformed the climate.

The planet has an average temperature of 15 degrees.

The problem is that if we go above 18 degrees, we start to have problems.

If we go above 27 degrees we will have serious problems.

We could lose the hydrogen from the clouds and lose life.

From 30 or 40 degrees we speak of a hot planet like Mercury or Venus with impossibility for life.

We are not going to achieve it, but we have to change things. The luck that man is intelligent is that he allows us to continue progress without damaging the planet.

Volvo has the goal of being CO2 neutral by 2040. In CO2 because it is the gas that warms the planet the most, the so-called greenhouse effect.

300 years ago we were at 184 parts per million and now we are at 400 parts of CO2 per million, with which we are going to exceed that degree and a half of temperature that we should not exceed and we have to stop this trend.

What kills human life is heat. How does Volvo contribute to the sustainability of the planet? In 2040 we will be CO2 neutral, in 2030 we will only sell electric vehicles and in 2025, 50% of our sales will be pure electric vehicles and the rest hybrids and plug-in hybrids.

We also have a company approved by the United Nations and WWF that is responsible for measuring all the emissions we make throughout the value chain, from the search for raw materials, manufacturing, design, distribution and recycling of our cars.

We talk about the circular economy of Volvo. What does this mean? From the year 2040,

We will take care of the complete recycling of our clients' vehicles.

We will return the old car to the factory to recycle all its parts.

Our commitment to CO2 is such that since 2018, our factories in

Gothenburg

[brand headquarters] are zero impact on CO2.

All the manufacturing that we have in America, Belgium, Sweden and China, 90% uses renewable energy. And in Spain? Obviously we share the philosophy.

Our headquarters is 100% renewable.

All chargers for electric vehicles in our commercial network are powered by renewable energy.

60% of our dealer network uses renewable energy and we hope that by the end of this year it will reach 100% of all the dealers we have.

And we are the first industrial company in the world to decide that the steel made by the Swedish company SAAB does not emit CO2, using green hydrogen.

Volvo is going to force all of its car exterior suppliers to be carbon neutral by 2025.

What materials do you use inside the vehicle? Volvo is recovering the wood that comes back from the sea to avoid cutting down trees for the interior wood.

That is why it has that grayish color, due to the mixture of water, salt and sun.

It is any type of wood, natural or from boats.

It is about reusing and recovering, beyond reducing, recycling and also re-educating ourselves in each industrial process.

If you kill trees from the Amazon, the trees don't recover in a year and a half and you're killing a lung of the planet.

We no longer use animal materials in our 100% electric vehicles.

If a client wants leather or skin, there are different fibers with which animal skins can be made.

How is this transformation costed? In the financial calculation we include an additional cost so that the income statement does not deceive us.

Sustainability is above the bottom line at Volvo.

In Europe, in 2020 we had 20% of electrified cars and 2% pure electric.

That year in Spain we did not reach 10% plug-in and zero electric.

In 2021, 40% of European sales were plug-in and 10% were electric.

In 2022, 65% will be plug-in and 21, electric.

In Spain, in 2021 we had 25% of plug-in sales (for 4% of the market) and this year we are going to reach 30%.

The goal for this year is to also add 10% of pure Volvo electrics.

That is, the objectives can be achieved.

Volvo's electric car is cheaper than a thermal Volvo.

With an electric XC40 the monthly fee is 500 euros;

If I take the equivalent with the XC40 mild hybrid, the renting fee is 560 euros, it emits CO2 and makes noise.

And only for the consumption of electricity you save about 5,000 euros a year.

In terms of total operating cost, an electric is more profitable with our finance company. What about an empty Spain? It is true that electric cars are sold more in the cities.

Here the problem is that we are very slow in infrastructure.

Compared to the 250,000 chargers that we should have as a leading country, we have about 14,000.

Let's hope that with the declaration of responsibility we will move forward because it no longer takes up to 14 months to install a recharging point, we are now between five and six months on average.

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