(Photo: The Bosch plant in Eisenach, Germany. Credit: Bosch)Bosch signed three long-term agreements for PV electricity to power facilities in Germany. The global technology and services supplier said that these deals put them on a path to carbon neutrality.
This week Bosch inked separate power purchase agreements with RWE, Statkraft, and Vattenfall. Each provider will supply Bosch exclusively from newly constructed solar power plants, according to the company.
“Electricity from the three suppliers’ subsidy-free photovoltaic parks will be transported through the public grid to be consumed at Bosch locations in Germany,” the company said. “From 2021 onward, this will cover a total annual volume of more than 100,000 megawatt hours.”
The maximum output from these solar deals, under optimum photovoltaic conditions, would be enough to fully power Bosch’s plants in Feuerbach, Homburg, and Bamberg simultaneously for at least a few hours, according to the company.
Since the end of 2019, their German sites have been climate-neutral, Bosch said. By the end of this year, they will reach carbon neutrality for all 400 locations worldwide, according to CEO Volkmar Denner. In 2019, the company emitted approximately 1.94 million metric tons of CO2 globally (Scope 1 and 2 emissions), which was a third less than they had emitted in 2018.
In addition to renewable power purchase agreements, the company is expanding onsite generation. Currently they report generating around 60,000 megawatt-hours annually from nearly 50 in-house PV systems. By 2030, they plan to reach 400,000 megawatt-hours.
“A photovoltaic system at Bosch’s Hemaraj plant in Thailand, scheduled for completion in 2020, will generate 1,300 megawatt hours of electricity per year,” the company said.
Other onsite projects include hydropower, biomass, and hydrogen fuel cell prototypes. This summer, Bosch commissioned a fuel cell pilot plant based on solid-oxide fuel cell technology for their training center in Wernau.
At the Bosch plant in Eisenach, a town in Thuringia, Germany, the company has another project under development. “By 2022, the plant intends to meet its electricity requirements through in-house power generation from photovoltaic systems and exclusive purchases of electricity from wind power, while minimizing demand through sophisticated energy management based on artificial intelligence,” Bosch said.
