Column: Automakers, suppliers leap ahead into reducing CO2

Responsible citizens of the world have been talking for years now about reducing greenhouse gases and “decarbonizing.”

But this week, we tell you that the global auto industry has leaped into that discussion — it has declared a kind of war on carbon, flipping over every rock to find ways to get carbon out of the equation of automaking.

In a lineup of stories from around the world, we point out that automakers and their supply chains are now reconsidering everything that might help them cut their output of greenhouse gas.

Hans Greimel tells us about the complexity of the attack on carbon now underway in Japan. The industry there is understandably anxious about the potential loss of millions of jobs and the economic hit Japan might take if automakers there suddenly switched wholesale to electric vehicles. And so companies are thinking as broadly as possible of solutions. A big one? Getting Japan’s power plants off of coal.

Peter Sigal, from our sibling publication Automotive News Europe, writes that Europe is already well ahead in the effort, and automakers and parts suppliers there are fully engaged in putting CO2-lowering solutions onto the market.

John Irwin shows us how the work is falling heavily onto the shoulders of suppliers around the world. In fact, their customers are putting them on notice that carbon-cutting is their new marching order.

And Washington reporter Audrey LaForest points out what may be the most surprising part of any of this: that on the U.S. side, this enormous new campaign has come to life without a regulatory mandate. There are no new laws setting quotas or threatening penalties. Yet the U.S. industry is zealously pursuing changes to create greener factories and transportation practices, to incorporate recycled materials and redesign parts to reach ambitious corporate goals on carbon emissions.

It was only a few years ago that, in America, this issue of greenhouse gas was a political debate over whether any of this work was even necessary. Today, the industry has apparently decided to disregard all that chatter and move quickly ahead with its own plan of action.