Food and beverage companies are taking initiatives to lower their energy usage footprints in a number of ways. However, it can be active and passive in nature. For instance, an active way is utilizing the waste products to produce biogas on-site. The passive way is purchasing alternating energy like solar, thereby encouraging startups and small energy firms along with the power generation facilities to adopt renewable energy sources in place of fossil-based fuels.
PepsiCo and McCormick & Company will be buying energy from the Constellation – an Exelon company that agreed to buy power and project-specific renewable energy certificates (REC) equal to 140 MW section of a big star solar project currently developed in Bastrop county Texas. The project is expected to be completed by the second quarter of 2022, and thereby the solar facility will be generating 200 MW or more.
Smithfield Foods started the construction of a large biogas gathering system in both Utah and Missouri on their farms. Such a system utilizes the anaerobic digesters to start the methane gas from hog manure, which is later cleansed and distributed into natural gas pipelines for supply to different communities.
Constellation – an energy solution provider, announced an agreement to help Pepsico and McCormick and company to operate with green, clean, & renewable energy from renewables 200 MW Texas solar facility.
However, huge customer commitments resulted in Constellation’s agreement to buy power and project-specific renewable energy certificates equal to the 140 MW section of the big star. Companies including McCormick and company, Pepsico, and others have also signed an equivalent agreement with Constellation to buy energy and REC from the big star project.
However, the Skipjack Solar Center is under construction in Virginia and is likely to come online by 2022 and will be able to offer renewable energy to power all McCormick’s Maryland and New Jersey facilities. As per Kurzius, it will take energy from Skipjack to Constellation’s CORe retail power product. The CORe is likely to fuel Constellation’s customer access to newly built renewable energy projects by eliminating the prominent hurdles related to traditional off-side power purchase agreements.
Roeslein Alternative Energy (RAE) and Smithfield Foods are likely to mark the 10th anniversary of the joint venture called Monarch bioenergy to execute the renewable natural gas technology in most of the Smithfield company-owned farms in Northern Missouri. They are likely to have execution up before their 10th anniversary.