The Issue

One of the nation’s largest pharmaceutical distribution companies was looking for energy procurement strategies that would support its effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 50% by 2032. As a long-time client of Burton, a strategic evaluation of renewable energy options was performed to better understand market potential, customer demand, and provide alternative solutions that balanced risk, price, and renewable alternatives to the client.

The Burton Solution

Burton’s procurement team evaluated multiple wind and solar options for the client and identified an opportunity in Texas that would allow two facilities to source 100% of the electric usage from a 500 MW wind farm in south Texas. This provided the client with competitively priced renewable energy that was embedded seamlessly into their electric supply without a large financial or time commitment.

Over five years, the customer will have more than 37,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of Green-e® Certified Renewable Energy Credits retired in their name. Burton also secured a named-source renewable energy contract for a site in Virginia, awarding our client over 9,700 MWh of renewable energy in a three years span.

The named-source renewable energy projects have volume requirements and are mainly available in these electric markets: ERCOT (Texas), ISO-NE (New England), New York (NYISO), and PJM (PA, NJ, & MD). For client facilities outside of these regions, Burton works with our suppliers to incorporate nationally sourced Green-e® Certified Renewable Energy Credits into their electric contracts.

These renewable energy purchases are a continued service in helping our client achieve their emissions reduction goal. Burton actively tracks new and existing renewable projects and provides the client with transparent pricing options. Their investment in these projects also supports clean energy development across the country.

The structures of each renewable energy contract may vary, depending on market conditions and changes in regulations, but our goal remains to manage the client’s price risk while providing a path towards the 50%
reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

Compared to utility rates, Burton has delivered savings of over $900,000 on contracts with renewable energy and over $2.3 million across the client’s portfolio in the past 3 years.

Open communication and proactive market monitoring has allowed Burton’s procurement team to deliver on its core service of identifying savings on third-party energy contracts and serve the sustainability needs of our client.