SCHOTT Solar Flagship Facility in New Mexico Achieves LEED® Certification for Sustainable Design
September 09, 2011
SCHOTT Solar, Inc. has achieved certification from the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED® program for the company’s $100 million, 200,000 square-foot solar products manufacturing complex near Albuquerque, New Mexico. The LEED® Green Building Rating System™ is an internationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high performance green buildings.
CH2M HILL, a global full-service engineering, construction and operations firm, provided engineering, procurement and construction management services for the SCHOTT Solar facility. The project was completed on budget and commenced production within 1 year after ground breaking.
SCHOTT Solar’s Albuquerque facility opened in May 2009 and employs more than 300 local workers as a growing economic driver of New Mexico’s solar industry ecosystem. It is the first in the U.S. to produce receivers used in parabolic trough, utility-scale, concentrated solar power plants (CSP), and the first in the world to produce both receivers for CSP alongside photovoltaic modules.
SCHOTT Solar, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of SCHOTT AG of Mainz, Germany and one of the largest solar manufacturers in the world. The New Mexico facility was developed to manufacture solar photovoltaic (PV) modules and receiver tubes for concentrated solar plants at the new facility, and is one of the company’s largest operations in the United States. The plant began production in 2009. Long-term plans call for the building to expand to 800,000 square feet with 1,500 employees, representing a total investment of $500 million.
CH2M HILL has been involved with this project since 2007, assisting SCHOTT Solar with site preparation, permitting, and other regulatory issues. CH2M HILL also provided strategic business planning and economic analyses to help guide SCHOTT to a site that could maximize the return on its new plant investments.
With 16 divisions and subsidiaries in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, SCHOTT Corporation employs approximately 2,500 people for the manufacture and distribution of special glass and glass-related systems. SCHOTT worldwide employs over 17,500 people and has sales of approximately US $4.2 billion.
Headquartered near Denver, Colorado, USA, employee-owned CH2M HILL is a global leader in consulting, design, design-build, operations, and program management for government, civil, industrial and energy clients. The firm’s work is concentrated in the areas of water, transportation, environmental, energy, facilities and resources. With US$6.3 billion in revenue and 23,000 employees, CH2M HILL is an industry-leading program management, construction management and design firm, as ranked by Engineering News-Record
and named a leader in sustainable engineering by Verdantix. The firm has been named a FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For five times. Visit us at www.ch2mhill.com, twitter.com/ch2mhill and facebook.com/ch2mhill.
SCHOTT Solar, with its high-quality products, enables the potential of the sun as a nearly inexhaustible source of energy to be utilized. And it is for exactly that reason that SCHOTT Solar produces important components for photovoltaic applications and solar energy plants. In the photovoltaic industry, the company is one of the few integrated manufacturers of crystalline silicon wafers, cells and modules. In thin-film technology, SCHOTT Solar also describes itself as an advanced supplier due to having over twenty years of experience. And in the production of receivers for solar power plants, SCHOTT Solar sees itself as a market and technology leader. The receivers are key components in large-scale power plants that generate electricity from solar energy centrally on the basis of parabolic trough technology and are able to supply entire cities with power. SCHOTT Solar has production facilities in the USA, Europe and Asia. The innovative power and technological competence of the company date back to the late 1950s. SCHOTT Solar is a wholly owned subsidiary of the international SCHOTT technology group. SCHOTT develops special materials, components and systems for the household appliance, pharmaceutical, solar energy, electronics, optical and automotive industries. With approximately 17,500 employees, the SCHOTT Group generated worldwide sales of about $4.2 billion in fiscal year 2009/2010.