GA Pet Food Partners plans for ‘behind the meter’ wind turbine in a drive towards Net Zero and improve business sustainability.
GA Pet Food Partners are a leading European pet food manufacturing company distributing to partners around the world from their UK production facility. The main driver for on-site renewable energy generation is for the company to achieve Carbon Net Zero by 2050; a GA Pet Food Partners pledge made to partners, colleagues and the local community. In addition to this pledge, the company is also looking to ensure it improves its core sustainability, both environmentally and economically.
Often referred to as distributed energy systems, renewable energy technologies such individual wind turbines can be connected at the distribution level of the electricity system ‘behind the meter’, meaning many businesses can use their own on-site energy production to power facilities, while ensuring the supply is from renewable sources like wind and solar. Over the past decade, commercial and industrial customers (e.g. food manufacturing plants, appliance manufacturing facilities, retail spaces, restaurants), agricultural and residential customers are all benefiting from the installation of distributed wind systems to meet their on-site energy requirements.
This type of energy production also means the energy requirements from the grid will also reduce, and as such can protect customers against market price rises for energy.
GA Pet Food Partners have commissioned Renewables First, an engineering consultancy specialising in wind energy development, to undertake a feasibility study to identify whether a wind turbine would be appropriate to off-set the energy demand of their production facility. The initial phase of work is a wind measurement campaign, ensuring site and turbine suitability in order to optimise the energy generated for the commercial premises and utilises a ‘wind Lidar’ to remotely measure the wind above the site at heights representative of a potential turbine once installed.
David Colgan, Environmental and Energy Manager at GA Pet Food Partners commented: “We understand the importance of decarbonising our company’s activities and given the geography of our manufacturing facility, onshore wind energy generation seems the most appropriate and effective next step for our organisation. When operational, our company have also pledged 5% of all on-site renewable energy generation will be provided to at no cost to neighboring village of Bretherton. This energy transmission is proposed to be managed through a local energy community partnership. We look forward to seeing the benefits of renewable power generation for our facility and also the local community.”
