Snacking, food, and pet care products provider Mars announced the launch of Renewable Acceleration, a new program aimed at accelerating the shift from fossil fuels to clean energy across the company’s operations and its global value chain.
Alongside the launch, Mars announced Enel North America as the first energy partner for its new program, with the new agreement including Enel Group’s largest-ever power purchase agreement (PPA) transaction with a commercial and industrial customer worldwide, as well as the largest to date for Mars.
The new program follows the launch by Mars in 2023 of a series of climate-related goals, including a target to cut carbon emissions across its full value chain in half by 2030, and to invest over $1 billion over three years to drive climate action. Transitioning the value chain to renewable energy, including addressing the energy used by farmers and by customers, was among the key initiatives highlighted by the company towards achieving its goals.
Mars said that it expects the Renewable Acceleration initiative to achieve a 10% reduction in its total carbon footprint by 2030, cutting approximately 3 million tonnes of carbon emissions from its full value chain.
Kevin Rabinovitch, Global VP Sustainability at Mars, said:
“Many large companies are well on their way to sourcing renewable electricity for their own operations, but that’s just a part of the picture. For Mars, Renewable Acceleration is a performance accelerator, cutting emissions at a scale and speed we could never achieve through traditional value chain engagement approaches. It lets us bring demand for all the electricity used in our value chain to the clean energy market in a highly efficient manner. The more demand we create together, the faster we can build the future we all want. And clean energy means cleaner air for our communities, our people, and our partners.”
According to Mars, while its own direct operations use approximately 2 TWh of electricity annually, the rest of its value chain uses substantially more, raising annual usage to around 8-9 TWh.
Under the new agreement with Enel, Mars value chain will benefit from the entire output from Enel’s three solar plants in Texas. The plants will generate a combined 1.8 TWh annually, avoiding approximately 700ktCO₂e per year.
Mars added that additional global agreements are in the pipeline, with the contracts supporting the development of renewable energy projects to serve both Mars and its suppliers.
Michele Di Murro, CEO of Enel North America, said:
“Renewable Acceleration is a bold initiative to support the buildout of more clean energy capacity, which we know is among the fastest and most economical ways to decarbonize. Mars is raising the bar for corporate sustainability strategies, taking a comprehensive and direct approach to addressing emissions across its entire value chain. Enel is proud to partner with Mars in launching this new program.”
