Honda’s virtual power purchase agreement (VPPA) with an Oklahoma wind farm is adding clean energy to the grid.

Honda is one of many companies working to decrease its carbon emissions and is up for a Cleanie Award for its VPPA with the Boiling Springs Wind Farm – one of two long-term VPPAs Honda entered into in 2019 for renewable energy. 

There isn’t always an opportunity to purchase renewable energy for Honda’s operations. VPPAs make it possible for Honda to purchase renewable energy and in turn sell it to the grid where the clean power is generated.

Honda’s VPPA with the Boiling Springs Wind Farm includes 60 turbines, which came online in December 2020. The Boiling Springs VPPA will help Honda fully offset the carbon footprint made from grids that power manufacturing plants in Ohio, Indiana and Alabama, where clean energy isn’t available. The wind farm will reduce more than 400,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions each year.

Additionally, Honda’s VPPA is infusing Woodward County in Oklahoma with $25 million in tax revenue for county and local school districts over the life of the project. The development of the wind farm also created about 160 construction jobs and over $10 million in local spending on labor, purchasing and materials at a time when the economy was being negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The VPPA will add more clean energy to America’s electric grid, reduced reliance on energy from fossil fuels and cut CO2 emissions.

For the Cleanie Award, Honda is competing against projects such as solar arrays installed by Wells Fargo and the largest solar energy installation on a school district property in Illinois.