Collins Aerospace to Install Solar Farm at Rockford Facility

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Collins Aerospace, an RTX business, has signed a 15-year power purchase agreement with ENGIE Distributed Solar and Storage for the construction and operation of a 6.5-acre solar farm at the company’s Rockford, Illinois Plant 6 site on Harrison Avenue. Under the agreement, Collins will pay ENGIE for the electricity produced by the project. ENGIE will retain the renewable electricity certificates and Collins will purchase replacement certificates from other qualified renewable projects. 

“As part of Collins’ Sustainability roadmap, we are committed not only to creating greener products for our customers, but also to making our own manufacturing operations more environmentally friendly,” said Steve Kotso, executive director, Electric Power Systems at Collins. “Rockford provides a perfect case in point. In The Grid, our new $50 million lab, we’re developing hybrid-electric propulsion systems to help future aircraft reduce emissions. At the same time, we’re installing a solar farm to help supply roughly 10 percent of our Plant 6 facility’s electricity needs annually. Overall, the agreement will reduce the site’s greenhouse gas emissions by more than 1,500 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year.”

Construction of the solar farm is slated to begin next spring and estimated to be complete later in 2024. Collins currently has solar arrays installed at 15 sites worldwide, avoiding more than 3,500 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year.