Walmart and Cargill forge ahead with new renewable energy deals

Image: Walmart

Earlier this year, Walmart announced an ambition to support the delivery of 10GW of new clean energy generation projects by 2030 and set out a strategic vision to support community renewable energy as well as going down the more traditional corporate power purchase agreement (PPA) approach.

The firm’s senior VP for energy transformation Vishal Kapadia this week confirmed that, since making that announcement in January, Walmart has committed to support a string of solar projects collectively totalling almost 1GW of capacity.

It has partnered with Pivot Energy and Reactivate to develop 26 new community solar projects across six US states. These portfolios will collectively have a capacity of 70MW and should support up to 13,000 households.

Most of the homes set to be served by these projects will be in low-to-moderate-income communities. As such, they will help not only with grid decarbonisation, but also with reducing energy costs amid the ongoing price crisis.

Walmart has also this year signed PPAs to source electricity from 842MW of solar projects across Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi.

Deals for a further 77MW of capacity have been struck directly with utilities.

Walmart had already, prior to 2024, struck long-term purchase agreements supporting the addition of 2GW of renewable energy projects.

Cargill’s solar expansion

In related news, US-based multinational food giant Cargill has confirmed a string of five new renewable energy purchase agreements that will collectively bring online 300MW of wind and solar capacity this year.

This is a significant scaling of the firm’s existing offsite renewable energy portfolio, which stands at 416MW.

One of the contracts is with Vattenfall and will see Cargill source energy from the Windpark Hanze onshore wind farm in the Netherlands for ten years. The 78MW project is due for completion before summer and should meet more than 90% of Cargill’s grid-based electricity demand.

Cargill will also procure electricity from an onshore 130MW wind farm in Texas, USA, in partnership with Blue Cloud Wind Energy, and a 55MW solar farm in southern Italy, as part of a deal with Galileo Green Energy.

The other deals relate to onshore wind in Bahia, Brazil, and offshore wind in Germany. In Germany, Cargill has worked with Mars to set up a virtual PPA to source power for six years from the Bard Offshore Wind Farm.

Cargill last year exceeded its 2025 target to cut operational emissions by 10% compared to a 2017 baseline. It posted a 10.97% reduction.

Related report: The Business Guide to the Just Transition