Earth Day 2025: Our Power, Our Planet

National Earth Day is observed each year on April 22. National Earth Day is held to demonstrate support for environmental protection. Every year around the world, Earth Day organizers promote green campaigns to save the Earth.

The theme for this year is “Our Power, Our Planet”, inviting everyone everywhere to unite behind renewable energy. Earth Day 2025’s goal is to triple the global generation of clean electricity by 2030. The push towards renewable energy lies behind wanting affordable, accessible, and sustainable energy for all.  

As part of Ahold Delhaize’s decarbonization agenda, we plan to reduce electricity emissions to zero by 2035. 

Our local brands use energy for multiple purposes: from lighting, to cooling systems, to baking fresh bread in your local store, to delivering your groceries at home.  

Within our renewable energy program, we focus on three aspects: energy efficiency, on-site generation and sourcing renewable or low carbon energy: 

Energy efficiency: here we focus on implementing energy-saving measures such as LED lighting, heat recuperation, heat pumps, new refrigeration systems and improved insulation. Taking measures like these enable us to create energy-efficient stores fit for the future.  

On-site generation: we also look to generate our own electricity, for instance with solar panels on roofs of stores, distribution centers and offices.   

Sourcing renewable or low carbon energy: within a food retail business like ours, it is not feasible to cut back our energy consumption to zero, nor to generate all the electricity we require ourselves. Therefore, we work towards sourcing the remainder of our electricity from renewable and nuclear sources.   

An example of sourcing renewable energy is our Virtual Power Purchase Agreement to support the financing and construction of a cluster of five solar power plants in Seville, Spain. This corresponds to approximately 30% of Ahold Delhaize’s electricity usage in its European Operations.  

In the U.S., ADUSA has agreements for 440,000 mWhs of renewable energy from 10 new build solar projects from Pennsylvania to Maine.   

By 2035, we plan to source nearly all electricity, other than own-generated electricity, through virtual and direct Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) in Europe, while in the U.S., a combination of PPAs and contracts will be used to build a portfolio of zero emissions supply, depending on the electric market rules. More information on this can be found in our annual report. 

As we celebrate Earth Day 2025, let’s remember that every small action count. Whether it’s supporting renewable energy initiatives, reducing our own energy consumption, or simply spreading awareness, we all need to work together on this. 

Ahold Delhaize