ENGIE North America Powers Houston Headquarters with Texas Wind
May 11, 2021
Houston, Texas – ENGIE North America announced today that its Houston headquarters is under contract for renewable energy from one of its own Texas wind projects. Beginning in May 2021 and running through 2028, the 25-story tower at 1360 Post Oak Blvd. within the Four Oaks Place portfolio will offset 100% of its electricity consumption with the purchase of energy and Renewable Energy Credits from ENGIE North America’s Live Oak wind project in Texas.
Four Oaks Place is a five-building, 2.3 million square-foot portfolio located in Uptown Houston. ENGIE North America occupies six floors at 1360 Post Oak Blvd. The portfolio is managed by Transwestern Real Estate Services (TRS) and is a joint venture of Nuveen Real Estate and Allianz.
ENGIE North America recently entered a retail energy supply agreement for approximately 5,747 MWh annually from the Live Oak wind project. The renewable energy in this agreement represents the environmental benefits of reducing CO2 emissions by more than 32,000 metric tons over the span of the contract.
Through accelerated growth of its renewable’s footprint, ENGIE North America has more than 3 GW of renewable energy capacity. That is enough clean energy to power all the households in Dallas and Houston combined, with more than 10 GW of additional renewable energy projects currently underway in North America. “ENGIE is a leader in the transition toward a carbon neutral world and our role is to show that focusing on the planet and people creates long-term value,” said ENGIE North America Interim Chief Executive Officer Bill Collins. “We partner with customers to help them integrate energy solutions that are cleaner, more efficient, and reliable. It makes sense for us to power our own headquarters with renewable energy coming from our own projects right here from Texas.”
Nuveen Real Estate, one of the largest real estate investment managers globally, has publicly committed to making the global property portfolio it manages, worth $133 billion, operationally net zero carbon by 2040. The ambitious target exceeds the commitment that the World Green Business Council states is necessary to meet the Paris Accord, by a decade.
“We work with a broad range of institutional clients and blue-chip occupiers and share their sustainability aspirations, said Abigail Dean, Global Head of Strategic Insights at Nuveen Real Estate. “Our pathway provides a route-map to net zero carbon through real estate, touching upon numerous other industries at the same time, and aiming to achieve carbon savings of up to 50-80% for a traditional real estate asset.”
Acting as an advisor on the agreement is Amerex Energy Services, the retail consulting division of Amerex Brokers LLC, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of BGC Partners, Inc.
ENGIE North America is the developer, owner, and operator of the Live Oak wind project. Live Oak (which is owned in partnership with an affiliate of John Laing Group plc) is a 200 MW project that is located near San Angelo, Texas. ENGIE North America added nearly 2GW of renewable energy in the US in 2020, a major contribution to ENGIE’s global goal of 9GW from 2019-2021. Globally, ENGIE commissioned 3GW of new renewable capacity in 2020, bringing total renewable capacity portfolio to 31GW.
About Nuveen
Nuveen Real Estate is one of the largest real estate investment managers in the world with $132 billion1 of assets under management. Managing a suite of real estate funds and mandates, across both public and private investments, and spanning both debt and equity across diverse geographies and investment styles, we provide access to every aspect of real estate investing. With over 85 years of real estate investing experience and more than 600+2 employees located across over 25 cities throughout the United States, Europe and Asia Pacific, the platform offers unparalleled geographic reach, which is married with deep sector expertise.
About ENGIE North America
ENGIE North America Inc. offers a range of capabilities in the United States and Canada to help customers decarbonize, decentralize and digitalize their operations. These include comprehensive services to help customers run their facilities more efficiently and optimize energy and other resource use and expense; clean power generation; energy storage; and retail energy supply that includes renewable, demand response, and on-bill financing options. Nearly 100% of the company’s power generation portfolio is low carbon or renewable. Globally, ENGIE S.A. is a global reference in low-carbon energy and services, that relies on their key businesses (gas, renewable energy, services) to offer competitive solutions to customers. With 170,000 employees, customers, partners and stakeholders, the group is committed to accelerate the transition towards a carbon-neutral world, through reduced energy consumption and more environmentally-friendly solutions.