FrieslandCampina doubles solar panels on shed roofs

These solar panels together generate over 200 GWh electrical energy per year. With this FrieslandCampina can cover 40 percent of its energy demand for its production locations and offices. The GroenLeven company in Heerenveen (NL) installs and manages the solar panels.

Hein Schumacher, CEO of Royal FrieslandCampina: ‘The ambition of FrieslandCampina is to fully cover the use of electricity within the chain with green electricity generated at the farm yards. We are enthusiastic about the progress we have made so far with solar panels on shed roofs and therefore we want to accelerate this process in 2018 and double the number of solar panels. We are making investments now in order to be able to work circularly in the future. This is perfectly in line with our objective to reward our member dairy farmers for their commitment to sustainability.’

FrieslandCampina offers through GroenLeven its members the possibility to hire out their roofs for installing solar panels. GroenLeven takes care of the connection, monitoring, financing and maintenance of the panels. The dairy farmer will receive an annual premium of 4 euro per panel for making the roof available. Additionally, the dairy farmer can choose each year to take over the system and the accompanying SDE subsidy. By means of the Solar programme FrieslandCampina wants to make a contribution to the objectives of the dairy farming sector concerning the reduction of greenhouse gases. Therefore it pays its members a bonus of 10 euro per ton reduction of the CO₂ emission, which will be incorporated in the payment for the panels.

With this FrieslandCampina aims at dairy farms with roof surfaces of more than 1000 square metres. The first roof with solar panels was installed in Oldetrijne (NL) in September 2017.