(Photo Credit: Invenergy)Novartis announced a virtual power purchase agreement with North American renewable energy company Invenergy for 100 megawatts of wind power. The electricity will come from an Invenergy wind farm under construction in Texas expected to come online next year.
Under the agreement, the renewable electricity will be generated from the Santa Rita East wind farm, located approximately 70 miles west of San Angelo, Texas. The 300-MW project straddles Reagan, Irion, and Crockett Counties. When financing on the wind farm was completed last summer, Invenergy said the facility will consist of 120 GE 2.5-MW wind turbines.
The VPPA with Novartis is expected to deliver 100 MW of new wind power capacity to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) that operates the electric grid and manages the deregulated market for 75% of the state, according to the two companies.
“At Novartis, we take our responsibility toward environmental sustainability seriously and it is important for our organization to meet our sustainability goals,” said Karen Coyne, global head of environment at Novartis. “This agreement is in line with our sustainability strategy and is expected to help us reduce our carbon footprint, constrain costs and increase adoption of renewable energy.”
Located in East Hanover, New Jersey, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation is an affiliate of Basel, Switzerland-based Novartis. The diversified healthcare group had net sales of $49.1 billion last year.
This new 12-year agreement aims to reduce Novartis’ greenhouse gas emissions by more than 220,000 metric tons per year, which represents more than 70% of the company’s carbon footprint from purchased electricity in the US market. Novartis will be issued renewable energy attributes to use to account for and report on its Scope 2 emissions.
In past years, Equinix, Owens Corning, and 3M have signed wind power purchase agreements with Invenergy in North America. US pharmaceutical company Merck & Co signed a deal with the energy company in April to buy the matching output of a 60-MW portion from the Santa Rita wind farm. Also a 12-year deal, that agreement should save the pharma company 100,000 metric tons of CO2 annually during the contract term.
