Penske Truck Leasing Eyes Up to 80% of Power From Solar
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Penske Truck Leasing is taking the first steps toward achieving a goal of sourcing up to 80% of its facilities’ electricity needs from on-site rooftop solar generation, a company executive said.
The first facility with a rooftop solar installation, in Channahon, Ill., is now operational. Solar panels installed there are expected to generate roughly 80% of the building’s energy needs, or 200 kilowatts of capacity. Any remaining required energy will be supplied by the local utility provider.
Installation at a Grand Rapids, Mich., site will follow in the coming months. The truck leasing, rental and maintenance group’s Linden, N.J., location is expected to start running a solar system in 2025.
“We are currently evaluating locations in various regions where solar photovoltaic installations would be economically viable and environmentally beneficial,” said Ivet Taneva, vice president of environmental affairs at Penske Transportation Solutions. “Our goal is to offset between 60% and 80% of our electricity needs through solar generation.”
Under a power purchase agreement with Sunrock Distributed Generation, seven further facilities in California are set to be retrofitted with PV solar systems over the coming year. Those sites are in Fresno, Hayward, La Mirada, National City, Riverside, San Diego and San Leandro. The facilities are set to yield around 600 kW of renewable energy across all seven locations.
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“While we do not have a set target for the number of facilities we plan to enroll into the program, we do evaluate each new Penske Truck Leasing facility for solar, as part of our broader LEED Volume program,” said Taneva.
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, is a green building certification system.
“We perform a full analysis with the help of our custom solar dashboard tool, which takes into consideration variables such as facility footprint, electricity cost, system size, state incentives, geographical location, and overall return on investment potential,” added Taneva.
Penske Truck Leasing expects the solar power initiative to boost efficiency, minimize energy costs, and reduce emissions.
San Francisco-based ForeFront Power is the lead project consultant on the initiative.
“Our solar program is an important piece of our renewable energy strategy and ForeFront Power continues to be an outstanding partner in helping us bring these projects to fruition,” said Drew Cullen, senior vice president of fuels and facility services at Penske Transportation Solutions.
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“These investments will allow us to directly generate our own renewable energy to power our locations and continue to support our customers with sustainable solutions,” he added.
Penske — best known as a leasing and rental specialist — operates more than 448,000 vehicles.
Penske Logistics ranks No. 13 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers in North America and No. 16 on the TT Top 100 logistics companies list.
Penske Transportation Solutions and ForeFront in May said they were teaming up on an electric vehicle infrastructure advisory joint venture to be known as Penske Energy.
The partners aim to help commercial fleet operators plan, design and deploy charging infrastructure.
ForeFront, a subsidiary of Japanese trading house Mitsui and Co., develops commercial and industrial-scale solar energy and battery storage projects in the U.S. and Mexico, plus charging infrastructure. Mitsui also is a Penske shareholder.
