Lego opens a toy factory in Vietnam it plans to run entirely on clean energy

BINH DUONG, Vietnam (AP) — Lego opened a $1 billion factory in Vietnam on Wednesday that it says will make toys without adding planet-warming gas to the atmosphere by relying entirely on clean energy.

The factory in the industrial area of Binh Duong, close to Ho Chi Minh City, is the first in Vietnam that aims to run entirely on clean energy. Lego says it will do that by early 2026.

It's the Danish company's sixth worldwide and its second in Asia. It will use high-tech equipment to produce colorful Lego bricks for Southeast Asia’s growing markets.

“We just want to make sure that the planet that the children inherit when they grow up needs to be a planet that is still there. That is functional,” Lego CEO Niels Christiansen told The Associated Press.

The factory is an important factor in Lego's quest to stop adding greenhouse gases by 2050. It has a shorter-term target of reducing emissions by 37% by 2032. The privately held group makes its bricks out of oil-based plastic and says it has invested more than $1.2 billion in a search for more sustainable alternatives. But those efforts have not always been successful.

Fast-industrializing Vietnam also aims to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, so it needs more of its factories to use clean energy. The country hopes the plant’s 12,400 solar panels and energy storage system will help set a precedent for more sustainable manufacturing.

Locating the Lego factories in regions they supply has also helped insulate them from the tariffs ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump, Christiansen said. “Right now, I am probably more observant of what does this mean to growth in the world? Do we see consumer sentiment changing in parts of the world or not, and what would that potentially mean?” he said.

The blocks are made from differently colored plastic grains that are melted at high temperatures and then fed into metal molds. The highly automated factory uses robots for making the bricks to a tenth of a hair's width precision and then packaging them. It eventually will employ thousands of mostly skilled workers to operate these machines. Some of them have already begun work after being trained in in Lego's factory in eastern China.

Manufacturing makes up a fifth of Vietnam's GDP and consumes half the energy it uses. There are plans to phase out its coal power plants by 2040.

The Lego factory, which spans 62 soccer fields, sets the “blueprint” for making large, power-guzzling factories sustainable while remaining profitable, said Mimi Vu, a founder of the consultancy Raise Partners in Ho Chi Minh City. “Sometimes it takes a big company, like Lego, to take those risks. To show that we can do it … And we can be profitable,” she said.

The factory will benefit from a new 2024 rule known as a direct power purchase agreement or DPPA, which allows big foreign companies to buy clean energy directly from solar and wind power producers and to meet their clean energy requirements.

The factory will be linked to an adjacent energy center where electricity can be stored in large batteries.

“So even if the sun is only shining during the day, we store the energy and can use it all over. That will cover by far the majority of the consumption of the factory,” added Christiansen,

The remaining 10%-20% of the factory's energy needs will be met through agreements with other clean energy producers.

“Lego and Vietnam, we are having the same aspirations. We both want to be green, to play our part in the climate. And I think this with the solar and battery and DPPA, it is showcasing that it can be done,” Jesper Hassellund Mikkelsen, Senior Vice President Asia Operations at the LEGO Group told The AP.

The company will also open a distribution center in Vietnam's southern Dong Nai province to help serve markets in Australia and other Asian countries where it sees an opportunity for growth.

The five buildings in the factory meet high energy efficiency standards. Lego also has planted 50,000 trees – twice the number of the trees it cut to clear land for the factory. It's the first Lego factory to replace single-use plastic bags with paper bags for packaging.

Lego's founder, Ole Kirk Kristiansen, started the company as a wooden toy maker before patenting the iconic plastic bricks in 1958. It is still is seeking a way to make its plastic bricks more environmentally friendly.

Christiansen said Lego bricks last decades and could be reused, though the ultimately ambition is to make them out of more renewable materials. He said that a third of the materials used in Lego bricks made last year were from renewable and recycled sources. But that's more expensive than plastic made out of fossil fuels.

“It’s not inexpensive at this point in time, but we believe if we ... lean into that, we help create a supply chain for the type of plastic materials that are not based on fossil fuel,” he said.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Workers scrub the floor at Lego factory in Binh Duong, Vietnam Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hau Dinh)

A worker operates packing machines at Lego factory in Binh Duong, Vietnam Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hau Dinh)

Lego CEO Niels Christiansen speaks during an interview at Lego factory in Binh Duong, Vietnam on Wednesday, April 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Hau Dinh)

Workers scrub the floor at Lego factory in Binh Duong, Vietnam Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hau Dinh)

A worker walks past Lego characters in Vietnamese traditional lion dance costumes displayed at Lego factory in Binh Duong, Vietnam Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hau Dinh)

A worker operates a moulding machine at Lego factory in Binh Duong, Vietnam Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hau Dinh)

Workers leave work at Lego factory in Binh Duong, Vietnam Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hau Dinh)

Lego bricks are moved on conveyor belt at Lego factory in Binh Duong, Vietnam Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hau Dinh)

Lego pieces are moved in packing machine at Lego factory in Binh Duong, Vietnam Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hau Dinh)

This image released by The LEGO Group, shows a Lego factory in Binh Duong, Vietnam. (The LEGO Group via AP)

Lego bricks are held in a worker's hands for checking at Lego factory in Binh Duong, Vietnam Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hau Dinh)

A worker operates packing machines at Lego factory in Binh Duong, Vietnam Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hau Dinh)

Workers sort out Lego bricks at Lego factory in Binh Duong, Vietnam Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hau Dinh)

A worker operates packing machines at Lego factory in Binh Duong, Vietnam Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hau Dinh)

Lego CEO Niels Christiansen poses for a photo at Lego factory in Binh Duong, Vietnam on Wednesday, April 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Hau Dinh)

Lego characters in Vietnamese traditional costumes are displayed at Lego factory in Binh Duong, Vietnam Wednesday, April, 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hau Dinh)

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Investigations into the Brown University mass shooting and the slaying of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor shifted Thursday when authorities discovered evidence they say indicates they were committed by the same man, who was then found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The attacker at Brown killed two students and wounded nine others in an engineering building on Saturday. Some 50 miles (80 kilometers) away MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro was killed Monday night in his home in the Boston suburb of Brookline.

The FBI had earlier said it knew of no links between the cases.

Here are some answers to questions about the attacks and investigations:

Claudio Neves Valente, 48, a former Brown student and Portuguese national, was found dead in a New Hampshire storage facility after a six-day search that spanned several New England states.

Brown University President Christina Paxson said Neves Valente was enrolled at Brown from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2001. He was admitted to the graduate school to study physics beginning in September 2000.

“He has no current affiliation with the university,” she said.

Neves Valente had studied at Brown on a student visa. He eventually obtained legal permanent residence status in September 2017. His last known residence was in Miami.

There are still “a lot of unknowns” in regard to motive, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said. “We don’t know why now, why Brown, why these students and why this classroom,” he said.

Loureiro, 47, who was married, joined MIT in 2016 and was named last year to lead the school’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, where he worked to advance clean energy technology and other research. The center, one of MIT’s largest labs, had more than 250 people working across seven buildings when he took the helm. He was a professor of physics and nuclear science and engineering.

Valente and Loureiro attended the same academic program at a university in Portugal between 1995 and 2000, Foley said. Loureiro graduated from the physics program at Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal’s premier engineering school, in 2000, according to his MIT faculty page.

The same year, Neves Valente was let go from a position at the Lisbon university, according to an archive of a termination notice from the school’s then-president in February 2000.

Authorities released several security videos of a person thought might have carried out the Brown attack. They showed the individual standing, walking and even running along the streets, but their face is masked or turned away in all of them.

Police say a witness then gave investigators a key tip: he saw someone who looked like the person of interest with a Nissan sedan displaying Florida plates. That enabled Providence police officers to tap into a network of more than 70 street cameras operated around the city by surveillance company Flock Safety. Those cameras track license plates and other vehicle details.

After leaving Rhode Island for Massachusetts, Providence officials said the suspect stuck a Maine license plate over the rental car’s plate to help conceal his identity.

Video footage showed Neves Valente entering an apartment building near Loureiro’s. About an hour later, he was seen entering the New Hampshire storage facility where he was later found dead, Foley said.

The two students who were killed and the nine others wounded were studying for a final in a first-floor classroom in an older section of the engineering building when the shooter walked in and opened fire.

Those killed were 19-year-old sophomore Ella Cook and 18-year-old freshman MukhammadAziz Umurzokov. Cook, whose funeral is Monday, was active in her Alabama church and served as vice president of the Brown College Republicans. Umurzokov’s family immigrated to the U.S. from Uzbekistan when he was a child, and he aspired to be a doctor.

As for the wounded, six were in stable condition Thursday, officials said. The other three were discharged.

Neves Valiente gained permanent residency status through a green card lottery program, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on X.

She said President Donald Trump ordered her to pause the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services program.

The diversity visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the United States, many of them in Africa.

The lottery was created by Congress, and the move is almost certain to invite legal challenges.

Whittle reported from Portland, Maine. Contributing were Associated Press reporters Kimberlee Kruesi, Amanda Swinhart, Robert F. Bukaty, Matt O’Brien and Jennifer McDermott in Providence; Michael Casey in Boston; Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas; Kathy McCormack and Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire; Christopher Weber in Los Angeles; and Alanna Durkin Richer, Mike Balsamo and Eric Tucker in Washington.

This combo image made with photos provided by the FBI and the Providence, Rhode Island, Police Department shows a person of interest in the shooting that occurred at Brown University in Providence, R.I., Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025. (FBI/Providence Police Department via AP)

A memorial of flowers and signs lay outside the Barus and Holley engineering building at Brown University, on Hope Street in Providence, R.I., on Tuesday, Dec 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt OBrien)

A Brown University student leaves campus, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, after all classes, exams and papers were canceled for the rest of the Fall 2025 semester following the school shooting, in Providence, R.I. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)