Mars Inc, the food and candy company, now runs on carbon-neutral electricity in the UK. They’ve tapped into the new, 20-turbine Moy Wind Farm, located just south of Inverness in the Scottish Highlands. Owned and operated by Eneco UK, Moy will generate the equivalent of 100% of the electricity required to power all 12 Mars UK sites. Mars has committed to buying electricity through Eneco UK for the next decade.
The Moy Wind Farm has an export capacity of 60 MW and an annual consumption of over 125,000 MWh. The wind farm will enable all Mars UK factories and offices to produce Mars’ best-selling brands—including MARS, PEDIGREE, WHISKAS, EXTRA and UNCLE BEN’S using renewable electricity. The power generated is equal to that used by 34,000 average UK households, or to make enough MALTESERS to fill 166 Olympic-size swimming pools each year.
With almost 4,000 Mars Associates, the private, family-owned business has manufactured in the UK for over 85-years. The company wants to shrink its carbon footprint and support the UK’s effort to increase the amount of the nation’s electricity generated through wind energy.
The wind farm is the latest step on Mars’ journey towards making its global operations fully carbon-neutral by 2040. The deal follows the April 2014 launch of a large-scale wind farm in Lamesa, Texas, which now generates the equivalent of 100% of the electricity required to power the company’s entire US operations. Efforts like these have helped Mars successfully achieve its global 2015 goal to reduce GHG emissions from operations by 25% from a 2007 baseline.
“The UK has been home to Mars for 84 years,” said Barry Parkin, Mars Chief Sustainability and Health & Wellbeing Officer. “We’re proud that the brands we make here will now be manufactured using renewable electricity, and that we are reducing our carbon footprint in the UK and around the world. As with our wind farm in Lamesa, Texas, Moy will contribute significantly to our effort to eliminate fossil fuel energy use and greenhouse gas emissions from our global operations by 2040 as part of our ‘Sustainable in a Generation’ program. The Moy Wind Farm is part of our innovative and long-term approach to achieving our goal to be a successful and sustainable business for generations to come.
We’re not there yet, but we recognize all businesses have a responsibility to tackle climate change and we hope our partnership with Eneco at Moy will encourage other companies to take steps to reduce their own carbon footprint through renewable energy. Working together, government and industry can move the needle on climate change.”
The Moy Wind Farm will let Mars’ UK factories and offices –12 sites in total—use only renewable electricity while producing iconic brands and meeting the needs of customers and consumers throughout the region.
For those who don’t grasp kWh, try these equivalents:
- 3.6% of Mars’ total factory and office carbon footprint
- Powering 34,000 average UK households
- Making 4.2 billion MARS bars
- Making enough MALTESERS to fill 166 Olympic-size swimming pools
- Making 450 million cans of PEDIGREE
- 1.8 billion WHISKAS pouches
- Making over 80 billion pellets of Wrigley EXTRA gum
- Making 3 billion servings of UNCLE BEN’S rice (based on a “serving size” of 48g dry rice)
- Making over 5 billion standard cups of coffee brewed by a Mars Drinks’ FLAVIA 400 brewerFor another flavor of the presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxszYf6gcQk
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