JBS starts issuing International Renewable Energy Certificates
The company is the first in the food sector to have an enterprise qualified to issue International Renewable Energy Certificates (International REC Standard / I-REC), which attest the generation of electricity from renewable and environmentally responsible sources.
The certification was obtained through Biolins, a thermoelectric plant located in the city of Lins, which belongs to JBS and uses various types of biomass as raw material for energy generation, such as sugarcane bagasse, wood sawdust and eucalyptus residue. The plant has 45 MW of installed capacity, enough volume to supply a city of 300,000 inhabitants. Based on the energy generated by the project in 2021, Biolins can issue 113,400 certificates for last year.
Certified in Brazil by the Totum Institute, the I-RECs can be purchased by industries and commercial establishments to prove that they consume electricity generated by renewable energy sources, such as solar plants, wind farms and biomass thermal plants. As a result, certificate holders are able to neutralize the so-called Scope 2 emissions, which considers indirect CO2 emissions from electricity for own use, contributing to the fulfillment of its decarbonization targets.
“This achievement is very relevant, because it attests that Biolins is environmentally clean and injects energy from a 100% renewable source into the National Interconnected System. With this, holders of the I-RECs issued by Biolins will be able to prove that the energy consumed in its operations is clean”, highlights the director of Sustainability at JBS Brasil, Maurício Bauer. Currently, Biolins supplies 20% of JBS's electricity needs in Brazil.
JBS Biolins was initially built to supply, with steam and electricity, the entire JBS industrial complex in Lins, which brings together several of the company's operations, such as the Friboi, JBS Couros, JBS Biodiesel, JBS Ambiental and JBS Hygiene and Cleaning units. Its energy surplus is destined to the National Interconnected System.
“The plant's operation has always been concerned with sustainability, generating clean energy and steam from the use, as raw material, of biomass acquired from local operations and farms, such as sugarcane bagasse, orange tree chips, eucalyptus chips from reforestation, peanut husks, eucalyptus husks, rice husks and sawdust,” explains Lari Barbosa Junior, utilities manager at JBS.
The qualification of JBS Biolins to issue I-REC certificates joins the various strategies developed by JBS to fulfill the commitment to zero its net balance of greenhouse gas emissions by 2040. The Company's initiative includes the use of clean energy for its businesses around the world, with solutions that include the use of photovoltaic farms to supply its own stores and the construction of plants to capture solar energy to supply industrial units.
Also among the actions to achieve its Net Zero objective, JBS is investing US$ 1 billion until 2030 to decarbonize its direct and indirect operations, with US$ 100 million in research to develop solutions that make agriculture increasingly sustainable.
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