Toyota will finance the construction of Kentucky’s largest solar farm project to date. The company announced on May 24th the purchase of 100 megawatts of energy produced by the first stage of the solar project.
According to a report by WDBR, the biggest Toyota plant in the world is Toyota’s Georgetown located in Kentucky, about 150 miles from the site of the solar farm. This plant has also participated in other green projects; it was designed as a “zero landfill” facility, which means that all waste produced in the factory is either recycled or reused. The company wants to make its operations in North America carbon neutral by 2035, and it hopes that solar power will contribute to achieve this goal.
“It is important that renewable power is more available to large-scale U.S. energy buyers and converting brownfields like this offers a path forward for former energy communities to take advantage of the infrastructure they already have with transmission lines while providing clean energy to the grid,” said David Absher, Toyota Motor North America’s senior manager of environmental sustainability.
Because of the distance between the solar array and the Toyota plant, the power generated by the solar farm won’t be physically delivered or used by Toyota. The company made a “virtual power agreement,” which means that Toyota will count the clean power as an offset of the electricity its operations consume from fossil fuels like coal and natural gas. This allows Toyota to support renewable energy development and reduce its overall carbon footprint..
“You can’t build anything until somebody buys the power,” former Kentucky Auditor Adam Edelen, whose company, Edelen Renewables, is involved in the project, told WDRB in an interview.
“…Green energy, it finances backwards. You’ve got to have somebody who’s your end off-taker before you can before you can go to construction.”
The solar array is planned to be built on a 2,500-acre former coal mine in Marin County, Kentucky, and is expected to create 300 jobs.