The Wonderful Halos plant in Delano, image via The Wonderful Co.

The Wonderful Co. has announced its intention to employ 100 percent renewable electricity across all of its U.S. operations by 2025 — Including its farms and processing facilities in the Central Valley.

As part of the commitment, The Wonderful Co., which runs such farming operations as Halos citrus and POM Wonderful, is joining the RE100 collaborative, a global effort by The Climate Group in partnership with CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project).

“As a responsible steward of the environment, we’ve invested more than $300 million in sustainability research and innovations, clean energy and prudent use of natural resources,” said Stewart Resnick, chairman and president of The Wonderful Co. “This is the natural progression of our sustainability efforts and the right thing for us to do as leaders in the agriculture industry.”

The Wonderful Co. started moving towards renewable electricity in 2007 with a ground-mounted solar installation that — at the time — was the largest privately held single-site solar plant in America. This generated nearly 15 percent of the required energy at its Wonderful Pistachios & Almonds processing facility. This January, the company signed a large-scale power purchase agreement with NextEra Energy to build a 23-megawatt solar project on 157 acres of farmland in the Central Valley.

This project is expected to generate enough electricity each year to grow nearly half of the company’s pistachio, almond and pomegranate crops and bring the company’s global renewable electricity use to approximately 25 percent. The Wonderful Co. will also seek to source the remaining 75 percent of its electricity from renewable energy projects sited primarily on company land in the region.