MOSCOW (MRC) -- The materials manufacturer Covestro and the energy company EnBW have signed a long-term industrial customer supply agreement (Corporate Power Purchase Agreement, PPA) for solar power, said the company.
Covestro has thus secured 63 megawatts (MW) of power from the 187 MW EnBW solar park “Weesow-Willmersdorf” in Brandenburg. The system operated by EnBW is the largest solar park in Germany and was implemented without state EEG funding. The agreement with Covestro is the first PPA for the project. From the beginning of 2022, solar power will be used for 15 years at the Covestro sites in Dormagen and Krefeld-Uerdingen. The company will primarily use the renewable energy there to produce more sustainable, mass-balanced plastics, which are manufactured using the so-called drop-in process using alternative raw materials. These include mass balanced polycarbonates and mass balanced thermoplastic polyurethanes.
The conversion of the energy supply to renewable energies is a central pillar in Covestro’s strategy. The company is completely geared towards the circular economy and wants to make its production climate-neutral in the long term. “With the purchase of solar power from the EnBW park, we are underlining our claim to play a pioneering role on the way to a climate-neutral future and are once again sending out a signal for the expansion of renewable energies in Germany. Because for the climate-neutral transformation of industry, we need large amounts of renewable energies at internationally competitive prices,” said Dr. Klaus Schafer, Covestro’s Chief Technology Officer.
The EnBW solar park near Berlin with its 465,000 solar modules has been fully connected to the grid since March 2021. “We have been campaigning for a long time to ensure that renewable energies are marketable even without government support. PPAs are an important instrument for operating subsidy-free systems economically. At the same time, as a central instrument of the energy transition, they help the consumer to achieve climate targets quickly and efficiently. This makes PPAs particularly attractive for companies with energy-intensive production. We are pleased to be able to support Covestro’s production with our solar energy, ”explains Dr. Georg Stamatelopoulos, Chief Operating Officer Generation & Trading at EnBW.
A crucial prerequisite for the production of more sustainable plastics is the use of renewable energies. Covestro began converting its energy supply to renewable energies at an early stage and has been building a portfolio of various PPAs in Germany, Belgium and China since 2019. The agreement with EnBW is the first PPA for the purchase of solar power in Europe.
We remind that Covestro closed the sale of its European polycarbonates (PC) sheets business to the Munich-based Serafin Group effective January 2, 2020. This includes key management and sales functions throughout Europe as well as production sites in Belgium and Italy.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's overall consumption of polycarbonate (PC) granules (excluding imports and exports to/from Belarus) decreased in January-October 2021 by 15% to 67,300 tonne from 79,500 tonnes a year earlier.
Covestro (formerly Bayer MaterialScience) is an independent subgroup within Bayer. It was created as part of the restructuring of Bayer AG from the former business group Bayer Polymers, with certain of its activities being spun off to Lanxess AG. Covestro manufactures and develops materials such as coatings, adhesives and sealants, polycarbonates (CDs, DVDs), polyurethanes (automotive seating, insulation for refrigerating appliances) etc. With 2020 sales of EUR 10.7 billion, Covestro has 33 production sites worldwide and employs approximately 16,500 people (calculated as full-time equivalents).
MRC