NETHERLANDS – The Dutch dairy co-operative, FrieslandCampina has announced that all its Campina brand products will be produced using green energy generated by its farmers as of 1 January 2021.
The farmers generate sustainable energy by means of solar panels, windmills or manure mono-fermentation.
The move according to the company is a fine step in making the entire chain from glass to grass more sustainable and is in line with its goal of becoming climate-neutral by 2050.
By the end of 2019, 94% of its worldwide electricity usage was ‘green’.
“We are going to take a further step by starting to use the green energy generated by the member dairy farms and so making our members our energy suppliers as well.”
FrieslandCampina in collaboration with its member farmers have been working on the transition to green energy for many years with now having over 3,000 of them generating green energy.
Having extra energy generated, the dairy company has resulted to turning the farmers to its energy suppliers as well.
Bas Roelofs, managing director FrieslandCampina Consumer Dairy Netherlands, said, “In the Netherlands, Campina has been entirely produced using green electricity for many years already.
“We are going to take a further step by starting to use the green energy generated by the member dairy farms and so making our members our energy suppliers as well. As from 1 January 2021, the entire Campina product range will be produced using green electricity generated at the Dutch farms.”
In 2020, member dairy farmers of FrieslandCampina reportedly generated a total of over 500 GWh of green electricity, which equals the annual energy consumption of more than 184,000 Dutch households.
Back in March, FrieslandCampina announced plans to purchase its electricity directly from its member dairy farmers, working with Power Purchase Agreements and CNS, a specialist in the field.
The farmer-owned dairy processor noted that the power purchase agreements will go beyond the Guarantees of Origin (GoOs), that are now commonplace, by allowing ‘grey’ purchased energy to become green.
A GoO is a certified proof that energy has been generated sustainably. In the traditional model, in which electricity and GoOs are sold separately, several parties are active in the chain, with each party adding costs.
The company is also implementing solar and wind electricity generation programmes to further accelerate its sustainable energy generation on the farm.
In August 2019, the company installed its first small wind mill on the farmyard of the dairy farm Poppe in Zwolle as part of a programme that offers its member dairy farmers the opportunity to install small windmills to make their own farm self-sufficient with energy.
The company has also installed more than 840,000 solar panels in collaboration with its dairy farmers in Netherlands.
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