Atrato’s new solar installation in Northamptonshire will generate energy exclusively for Britvic. It will have a total capacity of 28 MW and will be capable of generating 33.3 GWh pa of clean energy, the equivalent of powering 11,500 homes or planting 260,000 trees. The electricity generated will be enough to power 75 % of Britvic’s current operations in Great Britain, including its Beckton and Leeds factories, which can produce 2,000 recyclable bottles per minute for a portfolio of iconic brands including Tango, Pepsi and Robinsons.

As part of Britvic’s Healthier People, Healthier Planet sustainability mission to make a positive contribution to society, they are tackling their carbon footprint head on. Through innovation, utilising low carbon technology and energy sources, and establishing a more sustainable supply chain, Britvic is determined to play its part in securing a healthier future for the planet.

Britvic has committed to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and has led the industry as the first UK soft drinks company to have a 1.5 °C target verified by the Science Based Targets initiative. Britvic has demonstrated its commitment to this goal, having reduced its direct carbon emissions by 34 % since 2017 and generated 57 % of its energy needs from renewable sources in 2022, up from 28 % in 2018¹.

Progress has been achieved through significant investments across Britvic’s manufacturing base. For example, Britvic has installed five biomass boilers in Brazil, delivered multiple energy saving projects, is investing £ 4 million in a heat recovery system at Beckton, and they’ve recently announced a new Corporate Power Purchase Agreement in Ireland that will ensure that Ballygowan, Ireland’s iconic water brand, is produced using 100 % renewable electricity harnessed from local wind energy.

In this latest milestone, Britvic’s agreement with Atrato has provided the investment security needed to build the new solar farm in an old quarry in Northamptonshire. This will see 28 MW of new additional renewable energy capacity created as a result of the deal.

Atrato will supply Britvic with solar electricity that is commercialised on a pay as you generate basis but is delivered on a baseload basis that is consistent to the consumption needs of the company. This innovative and long-term PPA has underwritten the Atrato’s investment into this solar project.

Atrato has fully financed the solar installation, which is expected to be commissioned in early 2024. In only 19 months since IPO, Atrato has built a portfolio of 40 solar sites across the UK. Atrato is the green energy solution provider of choice for many UK companies with an impressive client list of blue-chip corporates including Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Anglian Water, Nissan and Amazon.

¹Britvic Annual Report 2022, page 3

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The project, which kicks off this year at its Beckton site, will see the installation of a new heat recovery system – cutting factory emissions by an estimated 1,200 tonnes annually – equivalent to the annual energy usage of around 500 UK homes.

Part funded by a £4.4 million government grant from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, the new heat recovery system will see the soft drink manufacturer switching its heating from natural gas boilers to carbon free heat extractors.

Nigel Paine, Supply Chain Director, added: “At our Beckton site we produce 2,000 drinks every minute – including many of the nation’s favourites such as Robinsons, Tango and Pepsi MAX. We are constantly looking at ways to improve the way we create these products and I’m delighted that, as well as our own funds, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero will be supporting us too. It means we can continue to supply the nation with great tasting drinks, while reducing our carbon footprint.”

With the help of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s Industrial Energy Transformation Fund, this heat recovery system will take waste heat recovered from our existing systems, increase the temperature and redistribute it around the site using a new low temperature hot water network, replacing our carbon intensive steam system. This will decarbonise 50 % of the site’s heat demand by shifting its heat source away from fossil fuels.

Sarah Webster, Director of Sustainable Business, at Britvic, said: “This major investment represents a significant milestone in our journey to reduce our scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions in service of our science-based targets, and our Healthier People Healthier Planet sustainability strategy. The support from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has been integral to making this happen and it re-enforces our view that collaboration and partnership is critical to developing long-lasting meaningful solutions to protect the planet.”

With the project set to commence at the end of 2023, the move is a huge step towards Britvic’s commitment to reduce its direct emissions by 50 % by 2025 and to be net zero target by 2050, verified by the Science Based Target initiative. Britvic is making good progress having reduced its direct carbon emissions by 34 % since 2017.

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“Tackling plastic waste is one of my top priorities and I take this challenge personally,” PepsiCo Chairman and CEO Ramon Laguarta. “As one of the world’s leading food and beverage companies, we recognize the significant role PepsiCo can play in helping to change the way society makes, uses, and disposes of plastics. We are doing our part to address the issue head on by reducing, recycling and reinventing our packaging to make it more sustainable, and we won’t stop until we live in a world where plastics are renewed and reused.”

Naked Juice, a category leader in premium fruit and veggie juices and smoothies, has been working since 2009 to ensure its bottles are made of 100 % rPET and can be turned into bottles again and again. By making its bottles with rPET, the brand also uses about 25 % less energy than if it used virgin plastic.

PepsiCo is one of the largest users of food-grade recycled PET in the world, and the company is also working to help reliably increase the supply needed to meet its packaging goals. In tandem with current suppliers and partners like The Recycling Partnership, Loop Industries, Alliance to End Plastic Waste, and World Economic Forum’s Global Plastic Action Partnership (GPAP), PepsiCo is aiming to both increase recycling rates and improve the plastic recycling infrastructure.

Learn more about our sustainable packaging vision here.

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As a major step toward fulfillment of its pledge to the RE100 initiative, which focuses on accelerating the transition to zero carbon grids at global scale, Crown Holdings, Inc. has signed a 15-year Virtual Power Purchase Agreement (VPPA) with Longroad Energy to utilize wind power in all of its U.S. and Canadian beverage can plants starting on July 1, 2020.  The new program will rely on a wind farm based in Knox County, Texas to generate over 400,000 MWhs of electricity. The renewable power will offset 100 % of the energy usage within Crown’s U.S. and Canadian beverage plants, which account for over 20 % of the Company’s global Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions. This transition serves as the first phase of Crown’s RE100 plan, which anticipates that the Company will run 100 % renewable electricity by 2050. The RE100 initiative is led by The Climate Group and CDP.

One of the first milestones on the Company’s journey will be achieving 30 % renewable electricity by 2020. To accomplish this goal, Crown is exploring renewable options in other countries, including Mexico, which runs on a different electricity grid than the U.S. and Canada and would serve as the final portion of a complete North American renewable energy program by RE100 standards. The Company’s next goal will be reaching 50 % renewable energy utilization by 2030.

“Completely transitioning our U.S. and Canadian beverage can plants to renewable electricity is the latest example of our willingness to take action when it comes to sustainability,” stated Timothy J. Donahue, President and Chief Executive Officer of Crown. “From innovations to our products, which use infinitely recyclable materials, to our industry-leading rankings with CDP, to our manufacturing processes, we will continue exploring opportunities that allow us to make meaningful progress.”

The adoption of wind power also supports Crown’s ongoing 2020 sustainability goals, which use 2015 production levels as a baseline year from which to reduce energy consumption by 5 % and emissions by 10 % per billion standard units produced. Crown has already met its energy goal and is well on its way to meeting its emissions goal, achieving 76 % of the goal within two years.

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The audio breakthrough could eventually lead to such consumer products as a foldable loudspeaker, a voice-activated security patch for computers and even a talking newspaper.

“Every technology starts with a breakthrough and this is a breakthrough for this particular technology,” said Nelson Sepulveda, MSU associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and primary investigator of the federally funded project.

“This is the first transducer that is ultrathin, flexible, scalable and bidirectional, meaning it can convert mechanical energy to electrical energy and electrical energy to mechanical energy.”

In late 2016, Sepulveda and his team successfully demonstrated their sheet-like device – known as a ferroelectret nanogenerator, or FENG – by using it to power a keyboard, LED lights and an LCD touch-screen. That process worked with a finger swipe or a light pressing motion to activate the devices – converting mechanical energy to electrical energy.

The current breakthrough extends the FENG’s usability. The researchers discovered the high-tech material can act as a microphone (by capturing the vibrations from sound, or mechanical energy, and converting it to electrical energy) as well as a loudspeaker (by operating the opposite way: converting electrical energy to mechanical energy).

To demonstrate the microphone effect, the researchers developed a FENG security patch that uses voice recognition to access a computer. The patch was successful in protecting an individual’s computer from outside users. “The device is so sensitive to the vibrations that it catches the frequency components of your voice,” Sepulveda said.

To demonstrate the loudspeaker effect, the FENG fabric was embedded into an MSU Spartan flag. Music was piped from an iPad through an amplifier and into the flag, which then reproduced the sound flawlessly. “The flag itself became the loudspeaker,” Sepulveda said. “So we could use it in the future by taking traditional speakers, which are big, bulky and use a lot of power, and replacing them with this very flexible, thin, small device.”

Imagine a day when someone could pull a lightweight loudspeaker out of their pocket, slap it against the wall and transmit their speech to a roomful of people, Sepulveda said. “Or imagine a newspaper,” he added, “where the sheets are microphones and loudspeakers. You could essentially have a voice-activated newspaper that talks back to you”.

Wei Li, an MSU engineering researcher and lead author of the paper in Nature Communications, said other potential applications of the FENG include noise-cancelling sheeting and a health-monitoring wristband that is voice-protected. “Many people are focusing on the sight and touch aspects of flexible electronics,” Li said, “but we’re also focusing on the speaking and listening aspects of the technology.”

The innovative process of creating the FENG starts with a silicone wafer, which is then fabricated with several layers, or thin sheets, of environmentally friendly substances including silver, polyimide and polypropylene ferroelectret. Ions are added so that each layer in the device contains charged particles. Electrical energy is created when the device is compressed by human motion, or mechanical energy.

The research is funded by the National Science Foundation. Other co-authors are David Torres, Ramon Diaz and Chuan Wang from MSU, and Zhengjun Wang, Changsheng Wu and Zhong Lin Wang from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

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Limoneira Company (NASDAQ: LMNR), a leading agribusiness with prime agricultural land and operations, real estate and water rights in California, announced today the commissioning of a new joint project with Tesla to reduce energy costs.

“This project will study the efficacy of battery systems paired to solar manufacturing facilities,” said Mark Palamountain, Limoneira Senior Director. “The goal is to reduce demand from the utilities during the day, which is the high cost period, and offset that use with less expensive night time energy that is stored in the battery.”

Limoneira has 6 solar installations across the company totaling 4.2M kWhs annually. An additional solar project is planned for 2017 which will add 1.5MWs on Limoneira’s packing house roof for 2.8M kwhs or a total of 7M kwhs annually. This will enable the Company to be 50 % off the grid. The Company is on track to become completely energy independent by 2022.

“Limoneira has a long history of land stewardship and sustainability,” said Limoneira CEO Harold Edwards. “We will continue to make investments that are clean as well as profitable.” In addition to Limoneira’s solar operations, the company is a leader in providing Work Force housing and has significant green waste recycling, integrated pest management and water projects.

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The new natural gas-fired combined heat and power system, representing a US$60 million investment by Tate & Lyle, will significantly improve energy and operational efficiency at the Loudon facility, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 50 %. Tate & Lyle’s global CO₂e emissions will also be reduced by around 10 % as a result of this investment.

The natural gas for the combined heat and power system will be supplied through a new dedicated pipeline which, as well as meeting Tate & Lyle’s energy needs, will provide the wider area with additional natural gas capacity to support local economic development efforts.

Vicky Bullivant, Vice President, Sustainability, Tate & Lyle said:
“This is one of the largest carbon reduction projects carried out by Tate & Lyle, and clearly demonstrates our strong commitment to reducing our impact on the environment. This major investment reduces Tate & Lyle’s global CO₂e emissions by around 10 %, providing a step-change in our global carbon footprint.”

Gerry Schlueter, Plant Manager, Loudon, Tate & Lyle added:
“We’ve been working closely with the community and our local and state governmental representatives from the outset of this project, and I would like to thank them for their support.

“This major investment has big wins for both Tate & Lyle and the local community.  Tate & Lyle reduces its environmental footprint at the Loudon facility by nearly 50 %, which benefits the local community, and the new pipeline will supply extra natural gas capacity to the wider area providing support for local economic development.”

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Charles Brand, Executive Vice President, Product Management and Commercial Operations at Tetra Pak said: “Signing up to RE100 reflects our on-going commitment to minimising our climate impact and increasing our use of renewable resources.

“We have set an ambitious target to ensure carbon emissions across our value chain are capped at 2010 levels through to 2020, and we are making excellent progress. In 2015 emissions were down 15 % from the 2010 baseline, despite a 16 % increase in production.

“Since setting our climate goal we have maximized our efforts to reduce energy consumption; committing to a renewable electricity target is a natural next step. By joining RE100 we will benefit from expert guidance and peer-to-peer learning on renewable electricity options in different markets.”

Mark Kenber, CEO of The Climate Group, said at the forum, “The demand push from corporates is as important as supportive government policy – bold action by businesses, cities and governments sends a strong market signal and means we can hold global warming below two degrees far more quickly.

“The Clean Energy Ministerial is shining the spotlight on RE100 as a model of best practice in galvanizing the switch to renewable energy, and the leadership of influential companies – such as Tetra Pak, which is joining RE100 today – shows the business case for 100 % renewables is as strong as ever.”

RE100 is a global, collaborative business initiative led by The Climate Group in partnership with CDP to drive demand for, and delivery of, renewable power.

Tetra Pak’s decision to join RE100 once again underscores its commitment to tackle climate change, and comes just six months after the company joined the Paris Pledge for Action at COP21.

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