Continuing its investment in renewable energy generation, Wayfair — along with a consortium of companies including EMD Electronics, Biogen Inc., Autodesk Inc., and a large healthcare company — entered into a large aggregated virtual power purchase agreement (VPPA) with Recurrent Energy, a subsidiary of Canadian Solar, Inc., for 100% of the production capacity of their solar project Liberty Solar. As part of this agreement, Wayfair is contracted to offtake 15MW of power, which we expect to represent over 64% of our energy consumption in North America in 2022.
Located 50 miles outside of Houston in Liberty County, Texas, Liberty Solar is a 100MWac solar project currently in development by Recurrent Energy and which is expected to be operational in Q4 2024. Once in production, Liberty Solar will expand solar energy capacity in Texas’ Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) region, where solar energy currently only makes up about 1% of the region’s resource mix, and will reduce CO2 emissions by an estimated 182,000 metric tons annually. That’s the equivalent of removing 39,000 combustion engine cars from the roads.
Aggregated power purchase agreements like this enable companies to combine their collective purchasing power to directly impact large-scale, environmentally safer projects like solar energy production facilities. Additionally, this agreement hopes to serve as a blueprint for other companies to follow and likewise scale their procurement of clean energy.
This purchase agreement accelerates Wayfair’s progress towards meeting our greenhouse gas reduction target and renewable energy commitment, and directly enables new grid-scale renewable energy by helping to finance the development and construction of the Liberty Solar project.
”We're pleased to partner with Sustainability Roundtable Inc. and other like minded companies to enable a renewable energy development that will support our collective carbon goals by driving more clean energy production,” said Maggie Finnegan, Wayfair’s head of product sustainability & climate.
Wayfair is committed to taking an active stand to protect our environment and the home we all share. To learn more about Wayfair’s sustainability initiatives and commitments, click here.