Go Green: decarbonizing our electricity consumption in Europe

Journalist

Hello, Emmanuelle Dusausoy, could you give us a brief description of the project to decarbonize our electricity consumption in Europe?

Emmanuelle Dusausoy

Our Go Green project involves using our 5 gigawatt-plus portfolio of solar projects in Spain to help portfolio of solar projects in Spain to help green the 6 terawatt-hours of electricity used each year by our industrial and commercial sites and offices in France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. It’s a large-scale solution to our ambition to decarbonize our operations in Europe.

Journalist

Practically speaking, how will solar farms in Spain supply all our sites in Europe with renewable electricity?

Emmanuelle Dusausoy

We traders acquire part of our Spanish solar farms’output via a 15-year power purchase agreement (PPA) and sell it directly on the local market.
At this stage, we capitalize on the Company’s integrated position, from production to consumption, our knowledge of the European electricity markets and our ability to anticipate the intermittent and seasonal nature of renewable projects to sell this output in a volatile price environment.
On the consumption side, we continue to provide our assets with electricity from wholesale markets depending on their location, our assets with electricity from wholesale markets depending on their location, so they have a 24/7 supply.
What makes our project green is that for each megawatt hour produced by our Spanish solar assets that we purchase, our traders will receive the equivalent amount of electricity, along with an electronic certificate attesting that it is a renewable megawatt hour. This is known as a Guarantee of Origin.

Journalist

Why is the Guarantee of Origin the cornerstone of the system?

Emmanuelle Dusausoy

It guarantees that the electricity used by our sites is really green. When one of our Spanish assets produces a megawatt hour, a Guarantee of Origin with a unique identification number will be created. The electrons will be fed into the grid and the Guarantee of Origin will be listed in a register by the Spanish government and then credited in our traders’account.
The traders will then be able to transfer the Guarantees of Origin from the Spanish register to the registers of other countries where our sites are located. Lastly, they will make sure that each time our sites in Europe consume a megawatt hour, on of our Guarantees of Origin is cancelled in the register of the country where the electricity was consumed.

Journalist

So this decarbonization solution is purely a financial arrangement?

Emmanuelle Dusausoy

No, not at all. First off, it’s a collective project involving different business segments and units: R&C, which will consume the energy, the renewables teams in charge of the Spanish solar farms, OneTech’s CO₂ customer line and us here at trading.
The renewable energy is really produced, and it is realy injected into the grid.
The solution has the advantage of promoting investments in renewables and reducing our carbon footprint.
It’s the principle of additionality. Thanks to the Guarantee of Origin, we can provide that we are working on decarbonizing our electricity consumption through new renewable projects.
We’re talking about avoiding 2 million tons of CO₂ a year in Europe.
Now we are working on a project to decarbonize our sites in the United States.
Go Green will continue to expand its reach.