Cargill is rarely the first name that comes to mind when people talk about wind turbines or solar panels.
The company is better known for beef, sweeteners and animal feed, products made in large and power-hungry plants.
Those plants are now the focus of a push to clean up the electricity that runs them.
Cargill has announced two renewable power agreements in the central United States, covering a wind farm in South Dakota and a solar project in Oklahoma.
Both projects sit within the Southwest Power Pool (SPP), a regional grid serving much of the central US.
That matters because Cargill runs several large facilities in the region.
The wind deal covers 87 megawatts (MW) from the Sweetland Wind project in South Dakota.
The agreement runs for 12.6 years and is expected to generate about 392,000 megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity a year.
Cargill puts the annual saving at roughly 162,000 metric tons (MT) of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), a measure that converts different greenhouse gases into a single comparable figure.
The solar half of the pairing is the 85 MW Choctaw Fields Solar project in Oklahoma, for which Cargill previously signed a long-term deal covering its full output.
The project began commercial operations in August 2026.
Cargill projects it will avoid about 1.3 million MT of CO2e over the life of the agreement, or around 86,000 MT a year.
Taken together, the company expects the two projects to support about 3.3 million MT of emissions reductions across their contract terms.
Both deals are virtual power purchase agreements, often called VPPAs.
Under this structure the electricity is delivered to the regional grid rather than to Cargill’s own sites.
The company instead receives the environmental attributes of that renewable generation.
Such contracts are typically financial arrangements that settle against wholesale power prices, which gives developers the revenue certainty they need to secure project funding.
The release does not disclose price terms or explain how the emissions savings were calculated.
It is a distinction worth keeping in mind when reading the headline figures.
Cargill’s explanation is as commercial as it is environmental.
Its operations sit inside its customers’ supply chains, so the electricity used at a beef plant ends up in the carbon footprint of the products those customers buy.
Christina Yagjian, Senior Director of Global Renewable Energy at Cargill, said the pressure is coming from that direction.
“Our customers are looking for ways to reduce emissions from the products they source from us, and we’re partnering closely with them to support their goals,” she said.
“By expanding renewable electricity in the regions where we operate, we can connect our energy sourcing more directly to the products and ingredients we supply to our customers.”
The projects feed into a target to cut absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 25% by 2035 from a 2020 baseline.
Scope 1 covers emissions released directly from a company’s own operations, while Scope 2 covers those from the electricity it buys.
“Absolute” means total tonnage rather than emissions per unit of output, so growth in production cannot hide behind efficiency gains.
Cargill says its renewable electricity portfolio now includes six VPPAs in North America and more than 100 projects across 30 countries.
What the release does not say is how far the company has travelled towards its 25% goal.
Nor does it state what share of Cargill’s electricity demand the two projects cover.
Those gaps matter because power contracts alone cannot deliver the full reduction.
Cargill also points to energy efficiency and onsite energy generation among its other approaches.
For now, the announcement shows a food giant treating power procurement as a supply-chain issue.
Whether the 2035 target is within reach will depend on disclosures yet to come.
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