Industrial giants power up with wind energy in Europe, Mexico

Some of the world’s biggest industrial companies continue to add renewable energy at a rate of knots, with news this week that IKEA has bought three new wind farms in Poland, while General Motors has signed an off take agreement to build a 34MW wind plant in Mexico.

For IKEA, the as-yet unspecified purchase of three new wind farms will bring the Swedish furniture giant’s total in Poland to six wind farms by the end of the year — altogether producing roughly ~473 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electricity a year, CleanTechnica reports.

In 2011 IKEA bought three wind farms in Podkarpacie region (in Rymanów, Bukowsko and Leki Dukielskie), which produce a total of approximately 134 GWh of energy annually.

According to an IKEA Group spokesman, the three new wind farms will produce an estimated annual total of 339GWh of energy – which, when added to the total, will produce enough energy to power roughly 225,000 Polish homes.

The wind projects will reportedly be backed up by biomass boilers at the company’s factories in the country — accounting for intermittency.

IKEA now owns and operates 314 wind turbines around the world, as well as ~700,000 solar panels, as part of its effort to generate 100 per cent of its energy needs via renewable energy sources by the year 2020.

General Motors, meanwhile, is making its first foray into wind energy, with the announcement this week that it will develop the 34MW wind farm in Palo Alto, Mexico, during the second quarter of 2015.

When complete, 75 per cent of the wind farm’s output will be used to power GM’s 104 acre factory and plant facilities in Toluca, an hour’s drive west of Mexico City – which is 526km from the wind farm’s Palo Alto site.

Wind energy from the project will also provide some electricity for other GM plants in Silao, San Luis Petosi and Ramos Arizpe.

The automaker has signed a power purchase agreement with Italian renewables company Enel Green Power, which will designed and build the plant.

According to GM, the wind farm will bring its renewables generation to 12 per cent, up from 9 per cent, and will help GM meet its 2020 renewables goal of 125MW of clean energy by 2020 four years early.

In an email with Triple Pundit, the auto maker said it expected to save about $US2 million annually once the Palo Alto wind farm was operating at full capacity.