Danish wind energy giant Vestas has signed a partnership with Enel X to accelerate the electrification of its company fleet of vehicles.
Vestas, which has recently been making significant moves into Australia’s onshore wind industry with several new major turbine contracts in Victoria, announced on Tuesday that it had signed an agreement with Enel X, the advanced energy services business line of Italian energy company Enel Group.
The partnership will see Enel X provide Vestas with the necessary charging infrastructure to electrify its corporate fleet of vehicles across the company’s most prominent service markets.
Enel X will supply 370 charging stations and a cloud-based charging platform. The charging stations will be comprised of the company’s JuiceBox charging stations, which enable mobile EV charging, and its JuicePoles, which enable the charging of two vehicles at the same time through an RFI card or App.
The new charging network will be deployed at locations in 15 of Vestas’ largest markets across Europe and the Americas and is an important step in the company’s plans to retire conventional vehicle usage by 2025. The partnership is also part of Vestas’ larger commitment to becoming carbon neutral, sans carbon offsets, by 2030.
Vestas hopes that, once they have completed the transition to electric vehicles, one third of their Scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions will be displaced.
“If we are to succeed with the energy transition across a global scale, industry leaders have a duty to implement the change we want to see,” said Anders Nielsen, Chief Technology Officer at Vestas.
“This new agreement marks another fruitful step in the collaboration between Vestas and the Enel Group,” said Francesco Venturini, CEO of Enel X.
“Enel X’s key role as a technology leader in the electric mobility sector keeps on boosting the e-Mobility Revolution and will support Vestas on the journey towards its ambitious sustainability goals, as well as further promoting electric mobility as one of the true enablers of the zero-emission future towards which the two companies have been working together for long time.”
The move by Vestas to double down on its decarbonisation efforts follows hot on the heels of two recent announcements which served much the same purpose.
Vestas announced at the end of October that it would take full ownership of its offshore wind joint venture with Japanese corporate heavyweight Mitsubishi, MHI Vestas, with a view to “meet customer needs across a wider range of the value chain”, including for green hydrogen.
Joshua S. Hill is a Melbourne-based journalist who has been writing about climate change, clean technology, and electric vehicles for over 15 years. He has been reporting on electric vehicles and clean technologies for Renew Economy and The Driven since 2012. His preferred mode of transport is his feet.