All bol.com buildings switched to renewable energy

Eneco installs 13,000 solar panels on expansion of bol.com fulfillment center

All bol.com buildings in the Netherlands and Belgium are now fully powered by green electricity. An important part of this transition is the recent installation by Eneco of over 13,000 solar panels on the roof of the new bol.com fulfillment center (BFC2) in Waalwijk. The current fulfillment center (BFC1) already ran entirely on local green electricity from Eneco’s windmills, which are located right next to the warehouses in Waalwijk. The last locations of bol.com have now also been switched, so that all offices, data centers and warehouses use 100 percent renewable energy. This is another important step towards achieving 0 grams of CO2 emissions per parcel by 2025. 

Vincent Weijers, Director of Logistics & Operations at bol.com: “This is an important milestone for the sustainability of bol.com, because the energy consumption in our buildings determined a substantial part of our total CO2 emissions. We want to achieve climate-neutral shopping at bol.com by 2025. By running 100 percent on solar and wind energy, we are getting closer to achieving that ambition. Of course, there is still a lot of work to do, but as the partnership with Eneco shows, we are continuously taking steps to be more sustainable: from packaging and delivering items as economically as possible, to offering a large sustainable assortment in our stores.”

Collaboration with Eneco
To make its energy supply more sustainable, bol.com started a collaboration with Eneco. This began in January 2017 with the deployment of wind energy from wind farm Waalwijk and has been expanded in recent months to include solar energy during the new construction of the bol.com fulfilment centre. The BFC2 now has a solar roof with over 13,000 solar panels. Each year this generates approximately 4 gigawatts of energy, equivalent to the annual energy consumption of approximately 1,200 households. Bol.com will use this green energy for elevators, lighting, automatic doors and order picking machines, conveyor belts, packaging machines and sorting systems, which will ensure that as many as half a million packages per day can pass through the huge mechanized fulfillment center. This will help to further reduce CO2 emissions per package.

Frank van Rees, Director Business Market at Eneco: “Making companies’ energy supplies sustainable is an important step forward in the energy transition. We are happy to help companies achieve their sustainability ambitions by looking together at which energy solutions fit their business processes, as was the case with bol.com. We started with local wind energy for the distribution center and have now supplemented that with a large solar roof on the new building. A close collaboration with a great result; all of bol.com’s buildings will be running on renewable energy by 2020.”