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LORDSTOWN -- The local General Motors plant and three other Ohio plants are expected to have the majority of their electric energy needs provided by wind energy beginning in 2018 as a result of an agreement with Starwood Energy Group, which is building a 12,500-acre wind farm in northwest Ohio.
Construction of the 100-megawatt wind farm in Van Wert and Paulding counties is expected to begin sometime in the fourth quarter of 2017 and be completed in 2018, according to Colleen Oberc, a GM spokeswoman.
The wind farm will sell energy produced there to the nation's energy grid.
GM announced its intention to benefit from the energy produced by wind turbine plants in Indiana and Ohio Tuesday.
Ohio GM plants impacted by this change will include Lordstown Assembly, Defiance Powertrain, Parma Metal Fabrication Center and the Toledo Powertrain facilities.
Plants in Indiana include the Fort Wayne Assembly, Marion Metal Center and Bedford Casting.
Swift Current Energy will provide 100 megawatts of energy from its HillTopper Wind Project in Logan County, Ill., for the three Indiana facilities.
Under the 12-to-15-year contract, GM's cost for the green energy will be fixed. Even after the wind farm is fully operational, the GM facilities will continue to purchase their electricity from their current providers.
Because GM expects the cost of traditional energy sources to continue to rise and the cost of producing electricity by solar and wind to decline as the technologies become more efficient, the corporation expects to reap long-term cost savings.
The Northwest Ohio Wind project is expected to provide enough energy to power more than 30,000 homes, avoid the carbon dioxide emissions of more than 34,000 homes or equivalently avoid the carbon dioxide emissions of more than 48,000 passenger vehicles, according to Tom Johnson, a spokesman with Starwood Energy Group.
"Fortune 100 companies such as General Motors have become a key force supporting renewable energy," said Himanshu Saxena, senior managing director and co-head of Starwood Energy Group. "We are pleased to enter into this partnership with General Motors to help meet their sustainability objectives."
Starwood Energy Group is a private investment firm based in Greenwich, Conn., that specializes in energy infrastructure investments.
GM, which has solar and wind powered facilities in Mexico and Texas, globally obtains about 3 percent of its energy from renewable energy producers. After this project is fully operational, the corporation expects about 20 percent of its energy to be provided from renewable energy sources.
A $2 million solar energy system placed on GM's Lordstown plant in 2015 produces approximately 2 percent of the plant's energy, said Tom Mock, spokesman for the Lordstown GM plant. The solar array has 8,500 solar panels and is located next to the Ohio turnpike, just south of GM Lordstown's paint shop.
GM is expecting all of itsplants worldwide to be using renewable energy sources by 2050. The corporation currently saves about $5 million per year.