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Pepsi bottlers to buy green energy vouchers
NEW YORK (Reuters) - PepsiCo Inc. said on Monday its largest U.S. bottlers were buying renewable energy certificates to match the electricity used by their U.S. operations, a move that places them among the nation's top green power buyers.
Pepsi Bottling Group Inc., PepsiAmericas Inc. and Pepsi Bottling Ventures LLC are together buying nearly 629 million kilowatt-hours of green power a year through certificates that will subsidize the development of wind, small-scale hydro-electric, biomass, landfill gas, biogas and geothermal resources.
Taken together, the company said this is the second-largest purchase of green energy certificates under a voluntary program run by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, behind PepsiCo Inc, whose annual purchase is for 1.1 billion kWh of power.
U.S. companies are increasingly buying renewable energy certificates to show their commitment to renewable resources and win the goodwill of environmentally conscious consumers.
Pepsi's move, announced earlier this year, propelled the drink maker to the rank of the nation's No. 1 buyer of green power, ousting Wells Fargo & Co., whose purchase was half the size, according to a list of the nation's top 25 green power purchasers, released on Monday by the EPA.
Organic grocer Whole Foods Market Inc. ranked third with an annual purchase of 509.1 million kWh, while Pepsi Bottling, which purchased 457.9 million kWh of green power, or the majority of the bottlers' purchase, debuted at No. 4.
The U.S. Air Force clocked in at No. 5, followed by Johnson & Johnson, the EPA, and Kohl's Corp..
Rounding out the top 10 green power buyers were the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts and Starbucks Corp.. Pepsi Americas was No. 13.
(Reporting by Martinne Geller; Additional reporting by Paritosh Bansal)
