Liberty Solar, a solar farm in Texas developed by Recurrent Energy will produce energy by 2024 and it will power five major companies.
Recurrent Energy, a filial of Canadian Solar Inc. announced last Monday that it signed an aggregated virtual power purchase agreement with an Industry Consortium that includes EMD Electronics, Biogen Inc., Wayfair Inc., Autodesk Inc., and a major healthcare company for 100% of the energy produced by the Liberty Solar project.
Liberty Solar is a 100 MWac solar farm project in Liberty County, Texas, approximately 50 miles from Houston. This project will expand solar energy capacity in the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) region, and will produce enough energy to power approximately 15,000 homes annually. According to the Houston Chronicle, this project will operate outside the ERCOT grid, serving just a small portion of North Houston.
Currently, solar energy makes up only 1% of the resource mix in MISO.
The purchase agreement was signed thanks to Sustainability Roundtable Inc. a company that offers advice and helps businesses to move towards a more sustainable way of development.
“This agreement will serve as a model for corporate procurement, further expanding the number of companies with robust credit ratings to make more renewable energy projects possible,” said Dr. Shawn Qu, CEO of Canadian solar, who also said that the contracts will last for 16 years.
The companies that signed the agreement want to lower their carbon emissions and adopt renewable sources of energy. “This solar development will support our long-term goal to reduce emissions across our value chain. Our portion of this project is expected to produce enough renewable electricity to power more than 3,500 average U.S. homes per year,” said Maggie Finnegan, Head of Product Sustainability & Climate for Wayfair.
According to the Houston Chronicle, solar energy has grown rapidly in Texas and the U.S. in recent years, estimating that this year another 7,700 megawatts of utility-scale solar power will be added. This power will be enough to power more than 1.5 million Texas homes and will feed into the ERCOT grid.
With this type of project and incentives, more companies are realizing the benefits of adopting solar energy. Hopefully, in a few years, they will achieve their zero-net goal emissions.
