Chevron will remain a tenant of Bishop Ranch as the community owner adds a 23.7 MW second phase of solar developments onto its mixed-use buildings.
A multi-use office and retail establishment that served as the corporate headquarters of oil major Chevron will now offset 90% of its energy usage with solar. Bishop Ranch, a 600-acre multi-use commercial campus in San Ramon, California, has entered the second phase of building a 25 MW solar development.
DSD Renewables is working with the property owner Sunset Development to add 35,000 solar panels across the multi-use development’s office rooftop space. Expected to be completed by Q1 2024, the second phase of Bishop Ranch’s solar development will see the community provide 22.24 million kWh of clean energy that will offset its energy usage by 90%.
The first phase of Bishop Ranch’s development began in 2021 when DSD developed a 1.33 MW system combining rooftop and canopy PV systems on the community’s City Center Bishop Ranch. At 300,000 square feet, Sunset Development reports that the shopping center is the largest retail space in the world to receive the LEED Platinum certification for sustainability and green building design.
“As we continue to transform Bishop Ranch into a vibrant downtown, DSD remains the ideal partner to assist in getting us one step closer to our ultimate goal of relying 100% on clean, renewable energy,” said Alexander Mehran, Jr., president and chief executive officer of Sunset Development.
Sunset Development is a third-generation, family-owned Tri-Valley, California, property owner that has developed and managed properties in the Amador Valley, San Ramon Valley, and Livermore Valley region since 1951. The company purchased Bishop Ranch from electric company Western Electric in 1978, overseeing the area’s transition into a suburban community.
In September, Chevron downsized its corporate campus, selling a 92 acre, 1.3 million square-foot office space portion of the Bishop Ranch complex back to Sunset Development, according to local business reports.
Chevron signed a lease to a 400,000-square-foot office space at Bishop Ranch, a 1.8 million-square-foot office building on which DSD Renewables is installing the rooftop solar. Chevron Park is expected to accommodate 2,000 employees and be complete in late 2023, according to Sunset Development. The new office will be owned by Sunset Development and MetLife Investment, and designed by engineering firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
Chevron has been based in San Ramon since the 1980s, and has produced oil and gas in California for over 140 years. In June, the company announced that it would sell Chevron Park, and downsize to a smaller location in San Ramon. In the process it subsidized the relocation of approximately 6,000 workers to its Houston, Texas office, according to local business reports.
The oil major’s $14 billion capital expenditures budget for 2023 calls for $11.5 billion in continued upstream oil and gas production, $1.9 billion for downstream refining operations, and just $600 million toward other investments such as the energy transition. Chevron has recently invested in carbon capture technology company, Svante, compressed natural gas (CNG) fueling company, Beyond6, and geothermal developer, Baseload Capital.
Formerly GE Solar, DSD was spun off of General Electric in mid-2019 with backing from BlackRock Real Assets. Since then, DSD has expanded into community solar and asset acquisition in 2020. Earlier this week, for example, DSD Renewables partnered with the Home Depot to install 13 MW of rooftop solar across a 25-store portfolio in California. The rooftop portfolio will begin construction in early 2023, and upon completion is expected to generate more than 17 million kWh of clean energy annually.
