Co-op announced a power purchase agreement (PPA) this week that will result in energy generated from a north Wales windfarm helping to power its estate.
Working alongside renewable energy provider RWE, Co-op said the seven-year PPA will help it increase the amount of renewable energy it procures, support national energy security efforts, and accelerate its own decarbonisation strategy. It comes at a time when the sustainability agenda is increasingly being used as a political football in the UK, with opposition parties to government touting policies to pull back on environmental legislation.
Co-op said it will source electricity produced from the Gwynt y Môr offshore windfarm to help power its food stores, distribution centres, and funeralcare homes across the UK. RWE will supply Co-op with a total volume of 33 gigawatt hours of electricity annually, which it noted is enough to power around 140 Co-op food stores a year.
Heather Thomas, group property & sustainability director at Co-op, commented: “For the sake of people and planet, it’s vital that collectively we tackle the climate crisis.
“The energy transition is central to energy security and therefore national security too. That’s why we believe that every business should be playing its part to help green the grid, be that by reducing their energy demand or indeed by ensuring that renewable electricity generation forms an integral part of their energy procurement decisions.”
Olaf Lubenow, head of commodity solutions UK, north & south Europe at RWE Supply & Trading, said there is continued growth in interest from the UK retail sector in sustainable energy solutions.
The Gwynt y Môr windfarm is located in the Irish Sea, off the coast of north Wales. It is Wales’s largest offshore windfarm and comprises 160 turbines with a capacity of 576 megawatts. It is owned by a consortium of RWE, Stadtwerke München GmbH and Macquarie GIG.
In 2023, Co-op Group signed a PPA with another renewable energy provider, Voltalia, which will result in the former sourcing its electricity from the latter’s solar farm in Yorkshire.
The corporate PPA covers the entire output of a 34,000-megawatt per year Eastgate solar farm, which is located in Scarborough in North Yorkshire, and is due to be fully operational this year. As part of the agreement, Co-op will source electricity for its estate over a 15-year period.
Co-op’s work in this space comes The Conservative Party in the UK, today, announced to repeal the Climate Change Act if it was to return to power. The Reform Party has also suggested it would scrap net zero targets given the chance to make decisions in government.
These moves have prompted widespread criticism in environmental circles, and within the business community.
Shirine Khoury-Haq, CEO of the Co-op & co-chair of the Net Zero Council, said: “Abandoning the Climate Change Act would damage economic growth and be nothing short of a betrayal – not just of global communities, including many which supply food to the UK and are already suffering the impact of the climate crisis, but also future generations denied the cleaner, greener and more prosperous future that we must work towards together.
“The UK is a world leader in climate targets, and we are the first major economy to halve emissions. We are leaders in the science and technology behind this success, which has been made possible because of long-term private sector investment unlocked by the certainty provided by a strong legal framework. This is an enabler of economic growth for our nation.”
She added: “At Co-op our ‘Climate Justice’ campaign for a faster and fairer transition to net zero is grounded in three principles – we’re led by the science, we’re working towards a fair and just transition for people and planet, and we’re co-operating across all parties, business and communities to drive systems change.”
[image credit: Kevin Berry for RWE]
