Enel Green Power partners with American corporations to power their energy needs with renewable electricity. Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts was the venue for #EnelFocusOn, an open discussion on the rise of corporate America’s investment in green energy featuring Amy Davidsen of The Climate Group, Peter Freed of Facebook and Angie Slaughter of Anheuser-Busch.
The fate of planet earth depends on what energy choices human kind makes today. Major US corporations understand this responsibility and are taking bold steps towards sustainability and increasing their green energy supply.
This was the core message underlying Amy Davidsen’s keynote address at the #EnelFocusOn event, where the Executive Director of North America’s Climate Group is a key figure behind influential global advocacy groups like the RE100.
Boston’s #EnelFocusOn also included a discussion with representatives from two companies who are making significant strides in their own sustainability goals. Peter Freed, Facebook’s Energy Strategy Manager and Angie Slaughter, the Vice-President of Sustainability from Anheuser-Busch, spoke to twenty digital influencers coming from around the world about their organizations’ sustainability goals. Ryan O’Keeffe, Enel’s Head of Communication, served as the event’s moderator.
As a testament to our company’s own sustainability commitment, the Boston edition of #EnelFocusOn was completely carbon negative thanks to the purchase of renewable energy credits from our Thunder Ranch wind farm and additional reforestation investments. This carbon negative first, means that we actually reduced more greenhouse gas emissions that we generated from travel and hosting the event itself.
A paradigm switch
Companies around the world are leading the charge towards sustainability, led in part by initiatives such as RE100. This organization, launched in 2014, brings together global corporations that pledge to make the transition to 100% renewable electricity.
Not surprisingly, of over 130 major global corporations that subscribed to RE100, an impressive 45 of them are US based.
And sustainability is no longer just a responsible business practice, declining costs of renewable energy such as wind and solar, have supported the increasing investments in green energy from companies around the world.
“We must rebuke the notion of climate change as a corporate cost. We must instead consider it an opportunity for innovation and business. Together, we make the world cleaner, healthier and more prosperous”
This is how the quest for sustainability and the fight against climate change become shared goals, with institutions, companies and utilities, all pushing hard in the same direction.
America is getting greener
In a world poised to become increasingly greener, the concurrent phase out from coal is a no brainer, under all aspects.
“Building a coal power plant has long been a hardly convenient choice, from an economic and financial standpoint”
In order to help companies navigate the new energy paradigm, renewable power producers, like Enel Green Power have introduced Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) - long term renewable energy supply contracts. -
PPAs provide companies with price certainty in an increasingly fluctuating energy market. They are also the basis to build strong and solid partnerships with our clients, helping us develop tailor-made projects at competitive prices.
PPAs from EGP are already the preferred choice of many corporations, including Facebookand Anheuser-Busch.
“Anheuser-Busch has pledged to go 100% renewable from this year on: this is a bold commitment and its benefits will be transferred to all our products”
As companies begin to think about how to carry out their sustainability goals, PPAs provide a resource to break-down many of the barriers to market entry and utilize a knowledgeable partner like Enel Green Power to transition to 100% renewables.
“We’ve worked very hard to implement all sustainable solutions put in place, and our commitment served as an example for other companies to follow suit in adapting their business model to sustainable practices”
An expanding revolution
The long term energy supply model offered by PPAs is ushering a revolution in other foreign markets like Mexico, Chile and Brazil, where government officials were quick to perceive their economic and environmental strong points.
This revolution has now reached the shores of Europe, where the United Kingdom and Scandinavian countries are now the standard bearers of sustainability.
Considering the PPA revolution was first spearheaded by major tech giants, it’s now traditional sectors of the economy and heavy industries who are setting their sights on long term contracts as an opportunity to diversify their energy portfolio while pushing for ambitious sustainability goals.
The spreading of PPAs has reached companies with medium energy-loads as well, together with SMEs who can benefit from a mitigation of fluctuating energy prices and an overall focus on sustainability which is steadily becoming a decisive factor in influencing consumer choices.
In 2017 EGP broke for the second year straight its own record for installed renewable capacity in twelve months, reaching a global tally of 2602 MW in new sustainable energy, 1,200 of which was built in the U.S., we are ready to power companies that today are keen to build tomorrow’s greener world.