Enel Green Power’s nearly-complete 185MW HillTopper wind farm in the US state of Illinois will feed some of its power to Starbucks, under a unique deal with power retailer Constellation.
Constellation, owned by Chicago-based utility group Exelon, has contracted 14MW of output from HillTopper, which it will then sell it to Starbucks – enough to cover all of the power needs of 340 of the coffee giant’s stores in Illinois.
The $325m HillTopper, due on line over the next month, already has a 100MW corporate PPA in place with General Motors and another 17MW PPA with Bloomberg LP.
HillTopper was developed by Boston-based Swift Current Energy, with EGP buying into the project earlier this year. The project, which uses GE 2.5-116 turbines, will be Swift Current’s first to reach completion.
EGP, part of Italian energy group Enel, has rapidly transformed into a leading player in the booming US corporate renewables market. It led the market last year with 650MW of corporate off-take deals with the likes of T-Mobile and Anheuser-Busch. It was also the leading US wind developer last year alongside long-time partner Tradewind Energy.
Part of EGP’s success in corporate renewables has come from its ability to strike smaller deals alongside larger ones, allowing a range of customers to source the amount of power they need.
Addressing the Starbucks deal, Georgios Papadimitriou, the newly installed head of Enel Green Power North America, noted that a growing number of corporate customers want “customised solutions” in procuring renewables.
“The agreement with Constellation is an example of an innovative approach we are taking to meet the needs of these commercial and industrial customers to enable them to achieve their sustainability targets in a cost-effective way,” Papadimitriou says.
Starbucks, a signatory to the RE100 initiative of corporations pledging to go 100% renewables power, is a major buyer of renewable-energy credits in the US – but like many companies is increasingly looking to buy clean power local to its power-load.
“We are identifying and investing in new green power projects that are close to our retail communities and give our store partners a story they can be proud of,” says Rebecca Zimmer, director of global environmental impact for Starbucks.