CATL's Liyang plant offers environmental solution

How does a company secure a massive output in the most environmentally friendly way?

Dealing with the dilemma for manufacturers worldwide on how to strike a sustainable balance between production and pollution, Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd's Liyang megafactory in Jiangsu province has come up with an "intelligence-driven greening" philosophy — cutting emissions not by sacrificing output but by eliminating waste through digital technology across research and development, production and equipment management.

The megafactory anchors a lithium-battery supply chain of 100-plus companies and accounts for over 11 percent of China's national production of the products.

"Power batteries underpin the global energy transition, yet their manufacturing is inherently energy-intensive. With global demand surging and capacity expanding rapidly, the industry faces a shared challenge — controlling carbon emissions while scaling up," Zeng Changhua, a quality manager with CATL's East China region, said during a media tour at Amperex in September.

At the Liyang plant, the full production process is simulated digitally, with 80 percent of new-product process parameter verification completed in cyberspace. That sharply reduces the energy and materials consumed by physical trial runs and debugging, Zeng said.

During production, big data and machine learning are used to optimize scheduling and energy management in real time, cutting unplanned downtime by 20 percent and avoiding unnecessary energy waste. The plant also operates East China's largest 5G private network to support full-process digitalization.

Zeng also pointed to a massive and efficient quality control system that minimizes the cell defect rate, which is also a key to reducing waste. The factory operates more than 7,000 quality monitoring points across incoming materials, cell production and battery pack assembly sectors to identify any hidden flaws in incoming materials.

Therefore, the system helps to ensure maximum manufacturing capacity, which produces one cell per second, one module every 20 seconds and one battery pack every 2.5 minutes.

"When quality is pursued to its ultimate limit, what remains is trust," said Zeng Yuqun, chairman of CATL, at the World Power Battery Conference in Yibin, Sichuan province, last month.

In 2023, CATL announced a zero-carbon strategy pledging carbon neutrality in core operations by 2025 and across the value chain by 2035. It delivered on the first milestone on schedule — all of its 28 battery factories worldwide achieved carbon neutrality in core operations in 2025.

The Yibin base is the world's first zero-carbon battery factory. In 2026 it earned additional World Economic Forum recognition as a Sustainable Lighthouse Factory.

The Liyang plant is certified as both a WEF Lighthouse Factory and a zero-carbon plant.

"As China's new energy industry expands globally, the question has shifted from can China make good products to are Chinese brands worthy of long-term trust?" Zeng Yuqun said during the Yibin conference.

In 2025, CATL's operating revenue grew 17 percent year-on-year. Its global power battery market share reached 39.2 percent, topping the world for nine consecutive years, with the overseas share rising to 30 percent. As of June, its products reached 74 countries and regions.

heqi@chinadaily.com.cn