Pharmaceutical and biotechnology development services company Charles River Laboratories International announced that it will be able to source renewable energy sufficient to address 100% of its European power requirements by 2023, with the signing of a new wind energy contract with Spanish energy company Repsol.
Today’s agreement also follows the company’s announcement from June 2021 that it will meet 100% of its North American electricity needs with renewable energy by 2023. Overall, the company anticipates that 90% of all its global electricity will be supplied by renewable energy by 2023.
Birgit Girshick, Corporate Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer at Charles River, said:
“As a global organization, we feel a significant responsibility to care for our planet. I am proud of the progress we’ve made in recent years to reduce our climate impact and look forward to this next phase of our energy strategy.”
Under the new virtual power purchase agreement (VPPA), Charles River will purchase 30.5 MW of renewable energy from a wind farm that is part of Repsol’s Delta II project. The project, which will have a total capacity of 860 MW distributed among 26 wind farms in the Spanish region of Aragon, has already begun construction and is expected to be completed in 2023.
According to the company, the new contract also marks a step towards the achievement of Charles River’s 2030 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction target. Gregg Belardo, Senior Director of EHS & Sustainability at Charles River, said: “This European VPPA will move us significantly closer to meeting our overall goal of a 50% reduction by 2030.”
João Costeira, Executive Director of Low Carbon Generation at Repsol, said:
“This agreement marks yet another example of Repsol’s continued development of its low-carbon generation business with assets that deliver both quality and profitability for partners and investors such as Charles River, which secures the corresponding benefits of powering its facilities with renewable energy.”
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