Kia announced it will procure 250 Gigawatt-hours (GWh) of renewable energy from solar power generation.
On Dec. 13, Kia signed a Solar Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with Hyundai Construction at its headquarters in the Yangjae neighborhood of Seoul. The signing ceremony saw the attendance of significant attendees including Jeong Eui-chul, executive director of Kia’s Corporate Strategy Office, and Choi Jae-beom, executive director of Hyundai Construction’s Development Business Division.
A PPA is a system where electricity users purchase renewable energy directly from power generators. Through this PPA, Kia intends to procure 250 GWh of renewable energy annually from solar power generation facilities totaling 219 megawatts (MW). This volume is equivalent to 31% of the total energy used at Kia’s AutoLand vehicle production plants, marking it as the largest scale of its kind among domestic companies in Korea. In power terms, it is sufficient to charge 2.5 million units of Kia’s EV9 Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV).
Kia plans to establish an environmentally friendly production system by giving priority to renewable energy at its electric vehicle-dedicated factories in AutoLand Gwangmyeong and Hwaseong.
This PPA agreement puts Kia on track to surpass The Climate Group’s RE100 target of 60% renewable energy usage by 2030. The company is set on achieving its goal of 100% renewable energy usage by 2040.
Kia also aims to install a total of 61.8 MW of solar power generation facilities within its domestic and international production bases, directly producing and utilizing 86 GWh of renewable energy annually. Currently, Kia is operating solar power facilities at Kia AutoLand Hwaseong (4.2 MW) and Kia India (1.6 MW). By 2027, the company plans to add 56 MW of solar power generation facilities at AutoLand Gwangju and other production sites in the United States, Slovakia, and Mexico.