Jaguar Land Rover wins Queen's Award for Sustainable Development

Jaguar Land Rover is turning the internal combustion engine into an unlikely emblem of sustainability.

In the autumn, the Midlands-based carmaker opened a new £500m factory in Wolverhampton that will build all-aluminium, lightweight petrol and diesel engines at a rate of one every 36 seconds.

The Jaguar XE, the first vehicle to be fitted with the new motors, is set to race into showrooms this summer with a CO2 rating as low as 99g per km - not far off the European Union-wide target for 2020.

What is more, the new engine plant is powered by the UK's largest rooftop solar panel array.

JLR - a remnant of the failed British Leyland group - is seeking to drive sustainability in the now-resurgent UK car industry. Its efforts span the company's four manufacturing sites across the UK, its fleet of premium saloons and off-roaders, as well as various educational and philanthropic ventures.

"Jaguar Land Rover takes a 'whole lifecycle' approach to developing vehicles and reducing their impact on the environment," says Ralf Speth, the company's German chief executive. "This drives our product design - the use of lightweight materials such as aluminium, and the development of advanced powertrains."

JLR, now flourishing under the ownership of India's Tata Motors, has managed to shave 400kg of weight off its two-and-a-half tonne Range Rovers. It is on track to eliminate a quarter of its European average carbon tailpipe emissions by the end of this year, compared with 2007.

An expanded research and development facility at Whitley in Coventry will explore new electric and hybrid technologies, an area in which JLR has been less active than rivals.

On top of product improvements, the company's operating emissions have also come down. Company-wide CO2 emissions from plants and offices have fallen by about a fifth in five years. The amount of waste going to landfill has fallen by three-quarters and water consumption by 17 per cent over the same period.

That matters. JLR is the biggest employer recognised this year's awards, with a workforce of about 28,000. It is also the UK's largest investor in manufacturing research and development, having ploughed in £10bn over the past five years. Its ambitious growth plans are aimed at rivalling the large German marques - the likes of BMW, which sells close to 2m vehicles a year, versus about 460,000 at JLR.

For this, it needs a skilled workforce. The employee base has more than doubled in five years and JLR has taken on 500 apprentices and graduate apprentices in the past 12 months.

But the carmaker needs more of them - to which end it runs education centres at its Solihull, Gaydon and Castle Bromwich sites to attract what Mr Speth calls "the next generation of engineers".

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