A group of some of the world’s largest corporations, including Amazon, Google, IKEA, and Microsoft, have backed an industry call for the European Union to eradicate the barriers to corporate renewable energy sourcing and Power Purchase Agreements, or PPAs.
Barclays, one of the UK’s four “Big Banks,” announced its commitment last week to source 100% renewable electricity for its global operations by 2030, with an interim goal of 90% by 2025, and a reduction to its global emissions of 80% by 2025.
British companies RBS (formerly Royal Bank of Scotland) and Landsec have this week increased their corporate climate leadership positions, becoming the world’s first companies to become members of all three corporate leadership initiatives of The Climate Group — RE100, EV100, and EP100.
American manufacturing giant 3M announced last week that it was committing to move to 100% renewable electricity across all its global facilities by 2050 and has started the process by switching its company headquarters St. Paul, Minnesota, to 100% renewable electricity last Friday and kickstarting the company’s efforts by bringing its total renewable electricity consumption to 30%.
As the year draws to a close it is only natural to look back at what has been, and forward at what might be. This is doubly important for the global clean energy industry and the policies which support its efforts to combat climate change and enact the core target of the Paris Climate Agreement.
Moving forward with our monthly What Changed … ? feature, below is a rundown of notable solar energy news — changed in the solar industry — during the month of November.
It has been a while since I wrote a “What Changed In The Solar Energy Industry … ?” article, so I’m lumping two months of news together for this one as November closes. That means cutting out more of the “small” stories, which should make this an especially potent roundup of notable changes in the electric vehicle industry. Enjoy!
The RE100 initiative, led by The Climate Group in partnership with CDP, has grown leaps and bounds in recent years, and in 2018 — amidst the starkest warning yet from scientists of the dangers of climate change and unchecked global warming — RE100 added 37 new companies, bringing the total up to 155 companies creating demand for a phenomenal 188 terawatt-hours of renewable power each year — equivalent to the 23rd largest country in the world.
Australia’s largest bank, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, announced this week that it has not only signed Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) worth 65% of its national electricity needs, to be completed by January 2019, but it has also committed to source 100% of its global electricity needs from renewable energy by 2030, joining the RE100 initiative to boot.
Only a month after it announced that it was joining the RE100 initiative and committing to sourcing 100% of its electricity from renewable energy sources by 2040, entertainment and electronics giant Sony Corporation has announced this week it is bringing forward its US goal by a decade.
