Samsung SDI joins RE100 to go renewable by 2050

Samsung SDI CEO Choi Yoon-ho talks about the importance of environmental management during a meeting with its employees at the Cheonan plant in South Chungcheong on Sept. 29. [SAMSUNG SDI]

Samsung SDI has signed on to the RE100 initiative, a global campaign to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy by 2050.

This comes about three weeks after Samsung Electronics signed on to the RE100 initiative. SDI is the second Samsung company to join the global movement.

The announcement is part of the Korean battery maker's move to achieve carbon neutrality by the end of 2050. It pledged to use renewable energy across all of its workplaces by 2050, with its overseas plants in Hungary, China and Malaysia taking the lead.

RE100, which stands for Renewable Energy 100 percent, was started in 2014 by The Climate Group in partnership with the Carbon Disclosure Project. Its goal is to encourage global corporations to run on only renewable electricity by 2050. Some 380 corporations worldwide have joined the campaign including Apple, Google, Microsoft and General Motors.

Samsung SDI will replace liquefied natural gas (LNG)-powered boilers with electric boilers and reduce the use of dehumidifier steam used in dry rooms in order to cut emissions. Incineration facilities will be replaced with LNG-free absorption equipment.

LNG is a major source of the company's direct carbon emissions, SDI said, which is used at its boiler and incineration facilities for dry rooms during the battery manufacturing process and for the prevention of air pollution.

The battery maker also said it will focus on the battery recycling business as making electric vehicle (EV) batteries also produces carbon dioxide. It has been working with a local recycling company since 2019 to extract cobalt, nickel and lithium from scrap at its plants in Cheonan and Ulsan under a closed-loop system.

The closed-loop system has been expanded to Malaysia and Hungary plants this year, and will be expanded to China and the United States by 2025.

All of SDI's corporate vehicles, including the leased ones, will be replaced with EVs. It currently has EV charging infrastructure at all domestic workplaces.

SDI formed a task force in January to closely manage the company's carbon neutrality plan. Chief Financial Officer Kim Jong-sung heads the team.

It opened a Recycle Lab within its R&D organization in May to develop technologies to raise the recovery rate and to find new ways of retrieving eco-friendly materials.

“Environment-friendly management is a necessary corporate social responsibility for future generations and key competitiveness of our business to become a Global Top Tier Company by 2030,” said Samsung SDI President and CEO Choi Yoon-ho.

BY SARAH CHEA [chea.sarah@joongang.co.kr]