The UK subsidiary of the world’s largest food and beverage company, Nestlé, has signed a 15-year indexed fixed-price agreement with Ørsted to buy green power from the Race Bank offshore windfarm
Nestlé UK will buy 31 MW of the offshore windfarm’s 573-MW total capacity, making it Ørsted’s largest fixed-price corporate power purchase agreement (PPA) in the UK.
From 1 May 2020, Nestlé UK will start purchasing 125 GWh of green power per year to cover 50% of its power consumption.
The agreement, along with Nestlé UK’s existing PPAs, will ensure all of Nestlé UK’s consumption is covered by PPAs from renewable energy backed by certificates.
For Ørsted, it stabilises revenues for Race Bank and reduces merchant power price exposure across its portfolio. The company’s senior vice president responsible for corporate PPAs Rasmus Errboe said, “Large corporations are increasingly taking climate action by sourcing green power, making important contributions to the demand for renewable energy. Today’s announcement with Nestlé UK demonstrates offshore wind’s attractiveness as a reliable, large-scale source of green power and underlines Ørsted’s ambition to continue to be a leader within corporate PPAs for offshore wind."
In December 2019, Ørsted signed the world’s largest PPA for offshore wind with Covestro, for 100 MW of the output from the Borkum Riffgrund 3 project in Germany.
The corporate PPA with Nestlé UK is Ørsted’s second in the UK, following a 23-MW agreement with Northumbrian Water, signed in February 2019.