French oil and gas giant Total is purchasing four large-scale solar energy projects, in addition to battery storage assets in Texas, with which it plans to meet the electricity demand from all of its industrial units in the United States, including refining and petrochemical platform at Port Arthur and petrochemical sites in La Porte and Carville.
The French oil company, which has increased its renewable electricity portfolio and has signed many energy purchase contracts (PPAs) for green energy in recent months, is buying the four solar projects for a total of 2.2 gigawatts (GW) plus 600 MW of battery storage assets from SunChase Power and the private energy investment company MAP RE / ES. All projects, each with co-located battery energy storage (BESS) systems, are in industrial areas near Houston with high electricity demand and are expected to go online between 2023 and 2024, Total said on Friday .
The oil major will commit to a 1 GW corporate PPA from this solar energy and energy storage portfolio to cover all electricity consumption from its US-operated industrial units, including those in Port Arthur, La Porte and Carville.
“With this latest acquisition, Total is now developing about 4 GW of renewable energy capacity in the United States, thus contributing to our goal of reaching close to 35 GW of renewable generation capacity by 2025,” said the President and CEO- Total boss Patrick Pouyanné in a statement.
At the end of 2020, Total’s gross power generation capacity worldwide was around 12 GW, including almost 7 GW of renewable energy.
Total was the second largest corporate buyer of clean energy globally in 2020, after Amazon, according to a BloombergNEF (BNEF) survey last month. French oil and gas giant Total signed 3 GW of CAE last year.
Total has acquired the largest renewable energy portfolio among European oil supermajors since Big Oil started announcing net zero targets last year and promised a significant increase in renewable energy investments, according to data from Bloomberg. Since the announcement of its new strategy and net zero targets in September 2020, Total has purchased up to 8.8 GW of renewable electricity capacity, in operation or under construction or development.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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