Estée Lauder has become the first major beauty company in the world to sign a virtual power purchase agreement for renewable energy, boosting its renewable electricity footprint in the US and Canada.
Global beauty company Estée Lauder announced that it has signed a virtual power purchase agreement (VPPA) for the Ponderosa wind farm in Oklahoma. The VPPA is Estée Lauder’s largest renewable energy contract and will cover more than half of its global electricity footprint with renewable energy technologies. It also means that the company has achieved 100% renewable energy in the US and Canada ahead of schedule.
“The Estée Lauder Companies is committed to innovating to help achieve a low-carbon future,” said Nancy Mahon, senior vice president of Global Corporate Citizenship and Sustainability. “We’re so pleased to meet our 2020 RE100 commitment for North America early.”
Under the VPPA, the company will purchase the energy produced by 22 megawatts (MW) of the Ponderosa wind farm, owned and operated by a subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources, which equates to approximately 10 wind turbines.
The wind energy the company will buy from Ponderosa is equivalent to powering more than 9,000 typical US homes and will reduce fossil fuel emissions equivalent to removing more than 14,000 cars from the road annually. Construction of the Ponderosa wind farm is scheduled to begin in early 2020.
The Ponderosa VPPA is the latest renewable energy project in Estée Lauder’s renewables portfolio, which also includes a 1 MW solar PV system at one of its labs in the UK and a 1.4 MW ground-mounted solar array recently constructed at its campus in New York.
The US Environmental Protection Agency has recognized Estée Lauder as one of the top ten retail partner green power users in its recent rankings. The company is also one of a select few RE100 signatories in the beauty industry.
Photo credit: jervert via Flickr
