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Mars has teamed up with energy partner Enel as part of its sustainability programme, Renewable Acceleration, aiming to speed up the shift to clean energy across its entire value chain. 

The initiative is designed to fuel the move away from fossil fuels by bringing the totality of Mars’ value chain’s electricity usage to the renewables market.

This involves sourcing renewable energy to cover everything from the farms that grow ingredients to the trucks that deliver products, and even the energy used by consumers at home to enjoy Mars products.

By implementing the Renewable Acceleration strategy, Mars said it could cut around 3 million tonnes of carbon emissions from its value chain – around 10% of its current total footprint.

Direct operations across the business globally use approximately 2 TWh of electricity each year, roughly the equivalent of the annual consumption of The Bahamas. However, when including the full Mars value chain under Renewables Acceleration to include its suppliers, customers and consumers, that number jumps to 8-9 TWh – the annual equivalent of Estonia.

The recently signed contract with Enel is the provider’s largest-ever power purchase agreement transaction with a commercial and industrial customer worldwide, as well as Mars’ largest contract to date.

Mars confirmed that additional global agreements are in the pipeline to support the development of renewable energy projects that serve the company and its suppliers.

According to the F&B giant, its first three contracts with Enel will generate a combined 1.8 TWh annually, avoiding approximately 700ktCO₂e per year. Mars will benefit from the entire output from Enel’s three solar plants in Texas, US. Vegetation across all three sites will be managed by sheep grazing, a dual-use solar practice that Enel expanded through the largest solar grazing agreement signed in the US.

Kevin Rabinovitch, global VP sustainability at Mars, said: “Many large companies are well on their way to sourcing renewable electricity for their own operations, but that’s just a part of the picture”.

“For Mars, Renewable Acceleration is a performance accelerator, cutting emissions at a scale and speed we could never achieve through traditional value chain engagement approaches. It lets us bring demand for all the electricity used in our value chain to the clean energy market in a highly efficient manner.”

Michele Di Murro, CEO of Enel North America, said: “Renewable Acceleration is a bold initiative to support the buildout of more clean energy capacity, which we know is among the fastest and most economical ways to decarbonise. Mars is raising the bar for corporate sustainability strategies, taking a comprehensive and direct approach to addressing emissions across its entire value chain.”