Industrial | Page 47

General Motors announced an agreement to purchase 300,000 megawatt hours of wind energy through DTE Energy’s MIGreenPower program. The energy sourced will be enough to power 100% of GM’s global technical center in Warren and their Detroit-based operations at the Renaissance Center.

Audi announced it will build a solar energy park on the roofs of the two logistics centers of its plant in Győr, Hungary. Covering about 160,000 square meters, this will create Europe’s largest photovoltaic system.

The electricity sector continued to improve its carbon intensity in 2018 due to increased renewable energy and natural gas power generation and investments in energy efficiency, even as a stronger economy and volatile weather boosted energy demand and contributed to a rise in economy-wide carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions.

Corporations bought a record amount of clean energy through PPAs, in 2018, shattering the previous record set in 2017, according to this column from BloombergNEF. Moving forward even at this accelerated rate, will RE100 companies meet their 2030 targets?

Ten years of the world’s biggest purchasers – including Bank of America, Dell, Kellogg Company, Unilever and Walmart – requesting transparency from their suppliers has triggered a step-change in environmental action, leading to 633 million metric tonnes of CO2 emissions reductions and collective cost savings of  $19.3 billion reported by over 5,500 suppliers in 2018.

Illinois achieved the lead position on the U.S. Green Building Council’s 2018 list of Top 10 States for LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). The ranking of states based on the number of LEED-certified square feet per person placed Massachusetts in second place