Oil Major Total Buys Texas Solar Projects

EghtesadOnline: France’s oil and gas supermajor Total is buying four large-scale solar power projects plus battery storage assets in Texas, with which it plans to meet the electricity demand of all its industrial sites in the United States, including the Port Arthur refining and petrochemicals platform and La Porte and Carville petrochemical sites.

News ID: ۷۸۵۹۴۵

07 February 2021

According to Oil Price, the oil major, which has been boosting its renewable electricity portfolio and has been signing lots of power purchase agreements (PPA) for green energy in recent months, is buying the four solar projects of a total of 2.2 gigawatts plus 600 MW of battery storage assets from SunChase Power and private energy investment firm MAP RE/ES.

All projects, each with co-located battery energy storage systems, are in industrial areas near Houston with high electricity demand and are expected to come online between 2023 and 2024, Total said.

“With this latest acquisition, Total is now developing close to 4 GW of renewable power capacity in the US, thus contributing to our objective to reach close to 35 GW of renewable generation capacity by 2025,” Total’s chairman and chief executive Patrick Pouyanne said in a statement.

Total was the second-largest corporate buyer of clean energy globally in 2020, after Amazon. The French oil and gas major Total signed 3 GW of PPAs last year.

Total has acquired the largest renewable energy portfolio among European oil supermajors since Big Oil started announcing last year net-zero targets and pledging significantly increased investments in renewables.

Since announcing its new strategy and net-zero goals in September 2020, Total has bought as much as 8.8 GW of renewable electricity capacity, either operational or in construction or development phases.