BT Group sings PPA for Stroupster wind farm
BT Group Plc, UK communications services company, has signed a £185 million (US$237 million) deal to buy power from the 30 MW Stroupster wind farm in Scotland to further support the provision of new renewable energy in the UK.
BT will be buying from the park 100 GWh per year of wind power over a period of 15 years under the terms of the contract. The wind farm comprising 13 wind turbines is BT’s second wind power purchase agreement (PPA) in Scotland and its fourth in total.
A unit of Germany's BayWa AG built the Stroupster wind farm and sold to Greencoat UK Wind Plc in December 2015.
Rob Williams, general manager of power procurement at BT, said:
“BT is a green energy pioneer and we have been purchasing 100 per cent renewable energy in the UK since 2012. By 2020 we aim to be purchasing 100% renewable electricity worldwide, so soon all of our power will come from sources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves and geothermal heat wherever we operate across the globe - where markets allow. We hope our commitment to renewable energy will encourage more consumers and businesses to make the move towards renewable energy.”
Brendan Dick, BT Scotland director, said:
“It’s great news that our global operations and networks will be supplied with renewable sources in this deal, the second in Scotland. As demand grows for our digital services such as superfast fibre broadband and cloud services, it’s important we power that expansion in an environmentally sound way. We’ve shown that investment in ICT could help reduce carbon emissions by 24 per cent by 2030 while bringing £122 billion (US$156 billion) economic benefit to the UK.”
BT consumes around 2.5 TWh anually. Combined with EE, BT uses around 1% of the UK’s energy to power its networks, data centers and offices, and it spends around £350 million (US$448 million) per year on energy and fuel.
