Mars is set to unveil a wind farm in Scotland, officially making its British operations carbon-neutral for the first time.
The company’s 20-turbine farm in Moy, near Inverness - run by sustainable energy provider Eneco UK - is its first major off-site green initiative in the UK, fuelling all 12 Mars sites.
It has an instantaneous output of 60 megawatts, which is enough electricity to run 34,000 average households or make enough Maltesers in a year to fill 166 Olympic-size swimming pools, according to Eneco.
Total energy provision was “enough to match current need plus a little bit more,” added Barry Parkin, chief sustainability and health & wellbeing officer for Mars.
Opening formally on 12 May, having been online since early last month, Mars’ Scottish wind farm is the company’s second globally.
It follows an 118-turbine project in Lamesa, West Texas, which began operating in April 2014, and marks the latest move in the supplier’s ‘Sustainable in a Generation’ plan, launched in 2007 to eliminate use of fossil fuels and eradicate its greenhouse gas emissions worldwide by 2040.
Mars has so far made a 25% reduction. Moy was a further “key milestone” towards 100%, said Parkin, who urged other companies to follow Mars’ example in working to keep the rise in global warming below two degrees centigrade. “This is definitely the way forward. If we can do this, everyone can.”
Mars would not reveal the size of its investment, but Parkin claimed Moy was “cost-effective”, and added wind farms were “not that expensive”.
Onshore and offshore wind farms supplied record amounts of clean electricity to Britain’s homes, factories and offices in 2015, according to National Grid, with 11% of the UK’s electricity generated by wind.
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