Wesfarmers Retailers Commit to Renewable Energy in Queensland
As part of their commitment to use 100% renewable electricity by 2025, our retailers, Bunnings, Kmart, Target and Officeworks have signed an agreement with CleanCo, the Queensland Government-owned renewables, low-emissions and hydro company, to supply the retailers with 100% renewable electricity across their 147 sites in Queensland.
This results in participating stores using a combined ~140,000 MWh of renewable energy each year by mid 2025, following a staggered onboarding of sites starting July 2022. This is equivalent to the energy consumption of approximately 23,000 Australian households each year and will result in the removal of carbon emissions from the environment equivalent to taking about 48,000 cars off the road. This represents 30 per cent of Scope 2 emissions from Bunnings and about 18 per cent of Scope 2 emissions for each of the other businesses.
Renewable electricity will be supplied to stores primarily from Western Downs Green Power Hub, one of Australia’s largest solar farms and MacIntyre Wind Farm, which, once completed, will be one of the largest wind farms in the southern hemisphere.
The new partnership is a step towards all four retailers sourcing 100 per cent renewable electricity by 2025, and supporting each retailer's achievement of net zero Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030, targets they announced in September 2020. The approach is consistent with the retailers’ approach of investing in energy efficiency initiatives to reduce usage in the first instance, installing onsite solar generation and storage where feasible, and sourcing the balance of needs from large-scale renewable electricity generation.
The Wesfarmers retail businesses will continue working towards their 2025 commitments through using both onsite generation and renewable electricity procurement.