Total, the oil and gas supermajor, has committed to buying four huge solar power projects in Texas. Total originated in France, and has since stretched its global power influence to several countries — including the United States. With these new power acquisitions in Texas, they are hoping to meet electricity demands for all of its service sites across the U.S.
The oil major has been expanding its energy portfolio to include renewable resources along with the non-renewable sources on which they were founded. This Texas buy from SunChase Power and MAP RE/ES will grant them 2.2 GW (gigawatts) and 600 MW of battery storage assets. Their projects are all within industrial areas near Houston, TX that have high electricity demands and are expected to be providing sustainable power by 2023 or 2024.
This latest acquisition will net Total close to 4 GW of renewable power for their service areas in the United States and they hope to reach 35 GW globally by 2025. This would be a huge increase from their 7 GW of global renewable energy they generated by the end of 2020. Total obviously has big plans for going green and pioneering the renewable energy market.
Currently, Total is the second largest corporate buyer of clean energy (Amazon being the first) and signed 3 GW of PPA’s just last year. They also have the largest renewable energy portfolio among all oil supermajors in Europe.
After Big Oil announced net-zero targets and pledged to increase investments in renewables significantly last year, Total has purchased nearly 8.8 GW of renewable energy capacity for operational projects and those still under construction and development. And all of these purchases have been made since their own net-zero goals and strategy announcement made in September of 2020.
One thing is for sure: Total is totally defining the green energy initiative in power and we thank them for their commitment to a sustainable future.