Agro-industrial and food conglomerate Charoen Pokphand Foods Public Company (CP Foods) announced it plans to increase its usage of green energy via the installation of solar panels at 180 animal farms, feed mills, and processing plants across Thailand.
The total energy capacity of the company's Thailand-based operations will be 65 MW by 2023 the Bangkok, Thailand-based company stated in a press release.
“CP Foods works promote the use of solar energy throughout the value chain to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enable cost optimization. The company had earlier this year announced that it had successfully phased out coal use across all of Thailand's operations in accordance with coal free 2022 campaign. The business substitutes biomass energy for coal,” CP Foods Executive Vice President Peerapong Krinchai said.
As part of its first phase, it installed solar panels on 27 factory rooftops, established 10 solar farms, and created two floating solar farm sites.
The company is currently in its third phase, with plans to install solar rooftops, solar floating systems, at an additional 67 operations. It aims to install solar panels on more than 80 locations during its fourth phase.
CP Foods said it aims to install solar panels to generate electricity at 34 of its 180 aquaculture operations across the country by 2025. It added that as part of its goal to become 100-percent reliable on renewable energy throughout its value chain, it plans to have 50 percent of its energy come from renewable sources by 2030.
Currently, the company said, renewable energy accounts for 30 percent of CP Foods' energy needs. Of that energy consumption, 30 percent is derived from biogas, 68 percent is from biomass energy, and 2 percent is solar energy, mitigating 600,000 tons of GHG carbon dioxide equivalent.
Photo courtesy of CP Foods
