Corporate Responsibility

Watch this video on how Bloomberg, Cox Enterprises, Gap Inc., Salesforce and Workday closed an all-new renewable energy aggregation deal with guidance from LevelTen Energy. This is the first example of companies aggregating similar, relatively small amounts of renewable energy demand to collaboratively enter into a virtual power purchase agreement (VPPA), collectively acting as the anchor tenant for a large offsite renewable energy project.

Sometimes, five heads are better than one.

One common concern among corporate energy teams at midmarket businesses is that they don’t procure enough electricity or have enough lawyers to take on the risks of a power purchase agreement. That’s why five companies with varying levels of experience in renewable energy procurement are getting together to contract for about half the generating capacity of a 100-megawatt North Carolina solar farm.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is shaping up to be one of the most significant opportunities of our lifetime. We are already seeing jobs, policies, industries and entire economies shifting as our digital and physical worlds merge. This represents an important opportunity for business and for society. With this industrial revolution, we have a collective responsibility to ensure sustainability is a priority from the start.

Energy intensity, or the total energy consumed to produce a set unit of product, is a key focus of our monitoring and improvement work. Operators manage fuel usage in the steam and power generation systems at each of our mills to optimize production and cost effi ciencies and work to achieve our current five-year goal to reduce energy consumption per ton of product by 5 percent. The reported energy profiles of our Westbrook and Somerset mills reflect sales of Renewable Energy Credits (RECs).

Bloomberg, Cox Enterprises, Gap Inc.(NYSE: GPS), Salesforce (NASDAQ: CRM), and Workday (NASDAQ: WDAY), with guidance from LevelTen Energy and its renewable energy procurement platform, closed 42.5 megawatts of a 100 megawatt North Carolina solar project, by global renewable energy developer, service provider and wholesaler, BayWa r.e. This group of companies, coming together as the Corporate Renewable Energy Aggregation Group, is the first example of companies aggregating similar, relatively small amounts of renewable energy demand to collaboratively enter into a virtual power purchase agreement (VPPA), collectively acting as the anchor tenant for a large offsite renewable energy project.

As the field of sustainability reporting continues to evolve and grow, GRI’s membership program evolves with it. In 2019, we are building on years of success for GRI’s global network with the establishment of the new GRI Community. This platform will bring together businesses, organizations and sustainability leaders that are committed to transparency.

Nik Sawhney is a project manager with Tetra Tech based in Pickering, Ontario. He supports projects that provide safe, clean, and reliable energy and works to help grow Tetra Tech’s business. Nik has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. We talked with Nik as part of our #TtInspires campaign celebrating the passion of Tetra Tech employees. Follow #TtInspires on social media for more stories.

Sami Ayass is a project manager based in Tetra Tech’s Diamond Bar, California, office and is part of the company’s Waste Management Practice, focusing on methane gas services. He graduated from Cal Poly Pomona with a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering and is a self-taught and certified Civil Professional Engineer in California and Texas.

Tim Singh is a proposal coordinator with Tetra Tech based in Vancouver, British Columbia. He helps Tetra Tech teams specializing in water, environment, infrastructure, resource management, and geotechnical engineering pursue and win new business. Tim has a bachelor’s degree in industrial design and a master’s degree in strategic design.

Associated gas (AG) is produced from the reservoir during oil production. In this post, Tetra Tech’s John Sachs, director of project finance, and Artur Davtyan, manager of project finance, discuss how AG could be used to fuel power plants, used as bottled gas, serve as a feedstock, exported as liquid natural gas (LNG), or put to other productive use, with contributions by John Beardsworth and William Newton of Hunton Andrews Kurth, LLP. All opinions expressed in this post are the authors’ own.