Toyota to Buy Solar Power from Former Coal Mine

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Toyota North America (NYSE:TM) said today that it has agreed to buy 100-megawatts (MW) of the electricity generated as part of renewable energy company Savion’s Martin County Solar Project. The project is converting the former Martiki Coal Mine, a brownfield site in Martin County, on the border of Kentucky and West Virginia, into a new solar photovoltaic energy facility. (AutoInformed.com: McKinsey – EU Decarbonization Targets Require Lots of Land)

“It is important that renewable power is more available to large-scale US energy buyers and converting brownfields like this offers a path forward for former energy communities to take advantage of the infrastructure they already have with transmission lines while providing clean energy to the grid,” said David Absher, senior manager of environmental sustainability at Toyota Motor North America.

Toyota said the previously active coal mine on the top of a mountain, which closed in the 1990s, the Martiki site has clear access to light from the sun, making it suitable for reclamation and the installation of solar photovoltaic panels for electricity generation. Construction on the project is estimated to begin in mid-2023 and commercial operation is expected in 2024.

The 100 MW that Toyota will purchase from the project will be used primarily to help reduce the company’s carbon footprint in North America. Kentucky is the state with Toyota’s largest vehicle manufacturing plant in the world. Toyota plans to make all its operations in North America carbon neutral by 2035.