On March 22, Nestlé in the U.S. announced it is investing in Ganado, a solar project owned and developed by Enel North America in Jackson County, Texas. With Nestlé's investment, the project, which is the size of just over 600 hectares, or about 850 football fields, will add 208 megawatts of solar electricity to the U.S. power grid. It will help Nestlé advance its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across its operations.
In addition to its direct investment, Nestlé will purchase 100 percent of the renewable electricity attributes, generated by the project's energy production. That's estimated to be an average of 333,000 megawatt hours per year for 15 years. This renewable electricity will be used to help power many of Nestlé's U.S. facilities, where household favorite brands, such as Di Giorno pizza, Stouffer's, Nesquik, Purina Pro Plan pet food and Tidy Cats cat litter, are made. The annual carbon emission reduction is expected to be about 126,294 tonnes of CO2, which is equivalent to the emissions of more than 27,200 cars per year.
"We will continue to accelerate the use of renewable electricity, including wind and solar, to source 100 percent renewable electricity across our sites globally by 2025, and to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050," said Howard Baker, Global Head of Engineering Service and Technologies at Nestlé. "Our investment in this solar project is an important milestone to achieve these objectives: we will use renewable electricity to help power our U.S. manufacturing facilities, while also contributing to increasing the amount of renewable energy available in the U.S."
Kate Short, Chief Procurement Officer, Nestlé North America, said, "We are continuing to accelerate our work to make sure we produce and transport our products in a sustainable way. Not only will our investment in Ganado help reduce carbon emissions across our U.S. manufacturing sites, but we're also proud that it will help expand the availability of renewable energy in the U.S., adding enough solar electricity to power about 24,574 homes each year." The investment in Ganado builds on the company's 2020 investment in solar project Taygete I in the U.S. Nestlé will continue to progress its work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to use more renewable energy to manufacture its products.
Nestle had already announced in January that Kitkat chocolate bars in Australia will be packaged in paper. The new paper packaging trial supports the company’s goal of reducing its use of virgin plastics by a third by 2025, which includes using less plastic, recycled plastic, and alternatives to plastic packaging.
