GreenYellow and Carrefour Forge Landmark Solar Energy Partnership - SolarQuarter
GreenYellow and Carrefour Forge Landmark Solar Energy Partnership - SolarQuarter
In a groundbreaking move towards sustainable energy, GreenYellow and Carrefour have signed a 20-year contract to implement Europe’s largest decentralized solar project. This initiative involves installing photovoltaic canopies across parking lots of 90 hypermarkets and 260 Carrefour supermarkets in France, covering nearly 180,000 parking spaces. The project will span key regions including Normandy, Île-de-France, Hauts-de-France, Grand Est, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Occitanie, and Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur.
Strategic Alliance for Energy Transition
GreenYellow, a renowned solar operator in the retail sector, will leverage its expertise to offer comprehensive support from design to installation and operation of the solar plants. The company guarantees performance throughout the contract, ensuring efficient multi-site deployment for Carrefour. Utilizing a third-party financing model, GreenYellow will cover the entire investment, enabling Carrefour to advance its decarbonization goals. This transformation to an “as-a-Service” model will position Carrefour at the forefront of solarization and decarbonization, meeting legal requirements for parking lot solarization and reducing dependency on fluctuating electricity prices through self-consumption of produced energy.
“We are extremely proud of the long-term partnership with Carrefour, a leader in mass distribution in France and internationally, for a project of unprecedented scale,” stated Otmane Hajji, President of GreenYellow. “This emblematic project reinforces our commitment to transitioning large French and international companies towards energy independence and confirms our leadership in decentralized solar self-consumption.”
Project Timeline and Impact
The development phase begins in July 2024, with the first installations expected to be operational by 2025. Half of the program is slated for completion by the end of 2026. Upon completion, the project will generate 450 GWh of clean energy annually, equivalent to the electricity consumption of a city with 200,000 residents.
“This program confirms the leading role that GreenYellow has played for years in promoting self-consumption in France,” said Mathieu Cambet, Deputy General Manager in charge of solar photovoltaics at GreenYellow France. “We are now entering the operational phase, finalizing technical partnerships, and creating a global ecosystem for deployment.”
Romain Butte, Managing Director of GreenYellow France, highlighted the partnership’s benefits: “We are delighted to collaborate with Carrefour. This solar initiative will significantly reduce their energy bill through self-consumption, supporting Carrefour’s goal of achieving 100% renewable energy by 2030. Additionally, photovoltaic canopies will enhance the customer experience by providing protection from weather. This large-scale deployment confirms our commitment to a greener and more sustainable future.”
Related Knowledge Center: ENERGY BASICS: renewables
Renewable energy sources — once the fuel of the future, then practical in specific, narrow applications — are increasingly economic mainstream sources of power generation. Hydropower was long the mainstay of U.S. renewable electricity generation, although wind power surpassed hydro for the first time in 2019, and solar continues its rapid growth. The continued growth of wind and solar, with their fluctuations, is tied in part to improvements in storage technology: batteries.