General Motors announced plans yesterday to install 8,700 solar panels on the roof of its White Marsh transmission plant by spring through a partnership with Beltsville's SunEdison, North America's largest provider of solar energy services.
The 300,000-square-foot solar project will be one of the biggest on the East Coast, generating enough electricity to power up to 150 households and reducing the plant's utility bill along with its reliance on Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.
The proposal is part of an effort to lessen the automaker's impact on the environment and cut costs amid hemorrhaging U.S. sales.
Last month, GM said it would slash $15 billion in spending through 2009 by laying off workers, cutting certain retiree health benefits and suspending its dividend for the first time in 86 years.
SunEdison LLC, which is negotiating a possible state incentive package, will bear the entire cost of the project and, during a 20-year contract period, sell the power it generates to GM, which can then claim yet another eco-friendly move.
General Motors Corp. has some of the country's largest rooftop solar-panel installations on two of its West Coast buildings and plans to have the world's largest by the end of the year at a car-assembly plant in Spain.
Last year, the General Motors Powertrain Baltimore Transmission Plant, which makes hybrid and heavy-duty pickup transmissions, became the first in the company to reach "landfill-free status," meaning it no longer sends its waste to landfills, but instead recycles or reuses all of it.
"GM has the ability to make a significant positive impact," John R. Buttermore, GM Powertrain's vice president of global manufacturing, said during a news conference on the plant's lawn yesterday morning, with a Cadillac Escalade Hybrid strategically placed behind the podium.
At the news conference, Gov. Martin O'Malley, who drives a GM Tahoe Hybrid, praised the development and its American roots: The energy is generated and used here, he said. It is "not being pumped out of oil fields in Iraq."
There's been a push toward more alternative energy forms - including new nuclear reactors, which fell out of favor after the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979 - over the past few years, in particular as rates rise and a nationwide shortage looms.
