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The beer giant Anheuser-Busch announced Tuesday the signing of a 15-year virtual power purchase agreement with Recurrent Energy for a 222-megawatt (AC) project in the United States. West Texas.
In 2017, Anheuser-Busch committed to purchasing 100% renewable electricity by 2025. AES Distributed Energy has already signed renewable energy agreements for a 2.76 megawatt solar project in New York York and Enel Green Power for 152.5 megawatts of wind in Oklahoma.
With the recurring announcement, the company – famous for its drinks, including Bud Light and Lime-A-Rita – announced that it would reach its target for 2025 several years in advance. The Texas project, Recurrent's largest C & I transaction to date, is expected to be operational in 2021.
Recurrent, a subsidiary of Canadian Solar, is involved in a number of commercial transactions around Texas. Canadian Solar claims to have signed more than 1.3 gigawatts of renewable energy projects in the ERCOT service territory, the network operator of 25 million Texas customers.
"We are seeing significant interest not just from actors like Anheuser-Busch, but from companies in the conventional energy sector," said a Recurrent spokesperson in an email. "Solar is extremely competitive in today's market."
The very low prices on power purchase contracts of less than $ 30 per megawatt have made Texas a favorite place for corporate solar development. Starbucks recently signed an agreement with Cypress Creek Renewables in the state and this month, Facebook announced that it had made its first direct investment in a renewable energy project in that country.
According to the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance, last year was a record for commercial and industrial renewable energy contracts in the US, with companies buying 6.63 gigawatts (this sum excluding on-site production) . Until now, in 2019, companies such as Gap and more typical customers such as Google have signed contracts worth 1.49 gigawatts.
While the US renewable energy market across all companies is becoming increasingly diversified and small scale aggregation is becoming more commonplace, Recurrent's West Texas project contract seems quite traditional: a large project with a single buyer representing most of the energy.
Beyond Anheuser-Busch, Energy Transfer – the company behind the controversial Dakota Access pipeline – has signed a 28-megawatt (CA) deal for the Maplewood Project in the Permian Basin in the west of Texas. This is the first solar contract of the oil and gas transportation company.
In addition to the diversification of the types of contracts entered into by companies in the renewable energy sector in the United States, the market is attracting companies from a growing number of industries, including oil and gas. Shell and ExxonMobil also signed solar contracts in western Texas, where cheap solar power is increasingly supporting the oil and gas industry.
This story has been updated with Recurring comments.
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