A significant part of Land Rover’s Responsible Manufacturing policy is an ongoing commitment to reducing emissions through the proliferation of renewable energy. So great is this commitment that Land Rover are now building diesel engines using wind power.

Every year, Land Rover’s Dagenham Diesel Centre produces 100,000 diesel engines. These engines find their way into a number of our models, including the Discovery, Defender, Range Rover and the Range Rover Sport. The energy behind these engine builds is harnessed from two 120m high wind turbine towers, which provide the Dagenham facility with 3.6MW capacity. That’s six million kilowatt hours of renewable energy every year. To put that another way, it´s roughly the equivalent to the electricity usage of over 2,000 homes.

The primary air pollutants in the UK are carbon dioxide (CO₂), sulphur dioxide (SO₂) and nitrogen oxides (NOx). Through the use of these wind turbines, the Dagenham Diesel Centre has significantly reduced the emission of these pollutants. The facility has cut 3,000 metric tonnes of CO₂, 67 metric tonnes of SO₂ and 20 metric tonnes of NOx each year.

Carbon emissions from the assembly of Land Rover’s vehicles at the two production facilities at Solihull in the west midlands and Halewood in the north west of England are also being offset. This offsetting process is managed by ClimateCare, with Land Rover’s Vehicle Assembly Offset Programme funding projects that either avoid or reduce CO₂ emissions all over our planet. Thus, ensuring the amount that’s saved balances the CO₂ emissions produced during the manufacturing and assembly process. Of course, all of the projects that are funded by Land Rover’s Offset Programme go through a rigorous process of verification and validation to ensure the CO₂ emissions targets are achieved.

At one such project, wind energy and Land Rover’s CO₂ offsetting come together in an effort to make a significant difference to carbon emissions for our planet. China’s economy is growing at an incredible rate and currently, the country consumes about 10% of the world’s power. This thirst for energy has resulted in what’s been reported as the commission of a new coal-fired power station every five days. The Land Rover CO₂ Offset Programme supports 82 wind turbines in Hebei province, with the capacity to generate a total of 110GWh per year. This is a significant addition to China’s wind energy capacity and continuing aim to reduce the region’s consumption of fossil fuels. The planned CO₂ emissions offset in this scheme are equivalent to those produced by 5,000 Discovery 3 TDV6s driving 45000 miles.

Land Rover and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) have launched a three-year global initiative, ‘Reaching Vulnerable People Around the World’, which builds on the £2.5 million of support that Land Rover have donated to the IFRC  since 2007.

The initiative is designed to support the IFRC’s life-saving work, reaching vulnerable people in communities all over our planet. Land Rover will be focussing on two of the top priority humanitarian programmes. The first is in Sierra Leone, which has one of the highest child mortality rates in the world. Land Rover’s support will help the Red Cross reach the most remote communities in order to improve healthcare, promote community cohesion and provide better access to safe drinking water. The second is in China, where Land Rover’s support will enable the Red Cross Society of China to reach the communities that are at the greatest risk from HIV.

The partnership with Land Rover allows the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies’ ‘Reaching Vulnerable People Around the World’ to work with the remote communities to facilitate improved access to health care and clean water. Another major aim of the initiative is to foster an attitude of co-operation, strengthening communities in a drive to ensure they are more resilient in the face future disasters. There is also particular attention being paid to the support of young people recovering from the effects of the civil war. Working together, we will reach nearly 85,000 vulnerable people. Land Rover vehicles have already been donated to support the work of the Red Cross in Sierra Leone.

The second major programme in the ‘Reaching Vulnerable People Around the World’ initiative takes the IFRC & Land Rover to China. Land Rover is already a strong supporter of the Red Cross Society of China and will continue to reach out those people and communities who are at risk of HIV. Land Rover’s long standing support of this programme has enabled the Red Cross Society of China to educate over 7,500 people about HIV prevention. They have also recruited 140 health trainers and continues to run public awareness campaigns that reach nearly 38,000 people.

Photograph credit Gregory Rose, BRC.

The Fault Line Living team got their amazing adventure underway on the 1^st of August, leaving Harwich International Port for the voyage to Denmark. Before this grand departure though, there was much that needed to be done. Christening their Land Rover Defender with a bottle of bubbly was just one of the many tasks that the team undertook before setting off. Packing and unpacking ‘Lottie’, as she’s now known, was considerably less glamorous.

Click here to watch a time-lapse video of the Fault Line Living team loading up Lottie.

However, thanks to the countless cubby-holes and hidden storage areas that Lottie can boast, it all fits. The real task is housing all of the equipment that the team will rely on to fulfil their expedition objectives; seven cameras, thirteen lenses, five laptops, eights sets of headphones, nine bags of carefully labelled cable, eleven battery packs, two seismometers and four hard drives.

In addition to housing and transporting the Fault Line Living team for the next 15,000 miles, Lottie must also act as a rolling studio. Every night, the team must record their findings and digitalise their content. That means editing the material, writing their blogs and recharging the batteries, both in a literal and figurative sense, for the next day of their Fault Line expedition.

As we have discussed in a previous post, the Fault Line Living project was the winner of the 2010 ‘Go Beyond’ bursary from The Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) and Land Rover. That means the Fault Line Living team have been awarded £10,000 worth of funding for this amazing expedition, not including Lottie, their fully expedition spec Land Rover 110 Defender.

The Fault Line Living expedition starts in earnest when the team reach Iceland. Certainly, in geological terms, the project begins with a visit to the dramatic ‘start’ of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge fault line, a massive 18,000 km rift between two of the our planet’s major tectonic plates. Lottie carried the team to the point at which the ridge enters the Artic Ocean; a fascinating region, scarred with fissures, in the north of Iceland known as Oxarfjorour.

Taking measurements along the fissure is just part of the Fault Line Living project. A big part of the expedition is talking to the local people who live so dramatically close to the fault line, in order to understand what life is really like for them. Instead of being told of a constant state of worry about earthquakes, it emerged that Icelanders are quite stoic and even relaxed about earthquakes. It seems that seismic activity is just such a part of normal life when you live on a fault line that the Icelanders are used to it.

The 2011 Freelander 2 is scheduled for release in the UK at the end of September 2010. At the heart of this next generation Freelander is Land Rover’s new, super efficient 2.2-litre diesel engine. The new engine is quieter, more efficient and has 20Nm more torque than the outgoing engine. This means the 2011 Freelander 2 offers improved engine response and more mid-range strength for towing, while significantly reducing CO2 emissions.

The 2011 Freelander 2’s new turbo diesel engine is available, as ever, in 4 wheel drive, featuring manual transmission and Land Rover’s intelligent Stop/Start technology as standard. However, as an addition to the Freelander 2 range, Land Rover will also be providing the option of a 2WD derivative, which is to be made available in the UK from January 2011. This ground-breaking model will be called the Freelander 2 eD4 and it will be the most efficient Land Rover ever produced, with fuel consumption of 47.2mpg combined and CO2 emissions of just 158g/km.

Along with the eagerly anticipated Range Rover Evoque, the new Freelander 2 eD4 moves Land Rover into the hugely popular and fiercely contested two wheel-drive SUV market. Aside from this, a 2WD option is just one of the ways in which Land Rover are continuing to develop vehicle efficiency. Naturally, this development cannot be to the detriment of the ongoing commitment to build the world’s finest all-terrain vehicles. Land Rover’s environmental partners depend on this impeccable standard of off-road performance.

Land Rover is committed to addressing the challenges of climate change and since September 2006, carbon dioxide generated by manufacturing activities and customer vehicle use has been counter-balanced through an industry leading offset programme run by Climate Care.