Disseminated on behalf of SolarBank Corporation.
SolarBank Corporation (NASDAQ: SUUN; Cboe CA: SUNN, FSE: GY2) teamed up with Viridi to build a 3.06 megawatt (MW) ground-mounted solar project. This project will also include a 1.2 megawatt-hour (MWh) battery energy storage system (BESS) in Buffalo, New York. This initiative plans to turn a closed landfill into a useful asset, providing clean energy to the local community.
Project Overview
- Location: Buffalo, New York
- Solar Capacity: 3.06 MW (DC)
- Battery Storage: 1.2 MWh
- Site: Repurposed closed landfill
In this collaboration, SolarBank will own the project, while Viridi will supply the battery storage system. The company has secured a lease for the site. It is now getting interconnection approval. Once the company gets the permits and funding, construction will start. The facility will then work as a community solar project.
Power Packed: Viridi’s Cutting-Edge Battery Solutions
Viridi equips its lithium-ion battery packs with integrated fire suppression and anti-propagation technology, adhering to stringent safety standards. Viridi’s design is different from traditional methods. It isolates each battery cell. This prevents thermal runaway. So, if one cell fails, it won’t cause bigger problems. Viridi is backed by a tier 1 management team, including the former Global Chairman of Investment Banking from JP Morgan.
Shared Sunshine: Empowering the Community with Solar
Community solar projects allow multiple participants to benefit from a single solar installation. Subscribers get credits on their electricity bills for their share of solar power. This lets them use renewable energy without needing their own installations.
Recently, SolarBank advanced two community solar projects in Skaneateles, New York, totaling 14.4 MW DC to power about 2,100 homes. The projects have completed the Coordinated Electric System Interconnection Review (CESIR) and are now proceeding with permitting.
The company aims to qualify for incentives under the NYSERDA NY-Sun Program. Once operational, these installations will supply clean energy to the local grid, offering residents access to renewable power without installing personal solar panels.
Storing the Sun: The Crucial Role of Battery Storage
Battery storage plays an important role in the energy transition. It helps integrate renewable sources, such as solar and wind, which can be unpredictable. Without effective storage, surplus energy can go unused, and grid operators may struggle to balance supply and demand. BESS technology solves these problems. It captures and stores electricity for later use, boosting efficiency and reliability.
The Growing BESS Market
The global Battery Energy Storage System market is growing fast. This rise comes from new technology and more use of renewable energy. In 2024, the market was valued at around $7.8 billion and is projected to reach $25.6 billion by 2029, growing at an annual rate of 26.9%.
In 2024, global BESS installations hit 205 GWh. This marks a 53% increase from the previous year, exceeding expectations. The grid-scale sector led this growth with 160 GWh deployed, 98% of which utilized lithium-ion technology.
Notably, 17 projects exceeding 1 GWh became operational in 2024, up from four in 2023. It shows there’s a strong pipeline for large projects. LFP batteries stay on top of the market because they are cheaper and have better technology.
- Looking ahead, over 400 GWh of grid projects are in the pipeline for 2025, though at least 30% may face delays or cancellations.
One of the key factors supporting this expansion is the significant cost reduction in battery systems. Over the past two years, solar module prices have decreased by 66%, while battery system prices have dropped by 58% in the last year.
Cost cuts have made renewable energy projects cheaper. This change encourages more investment in energy storage solutions.
Regional Expansion and Market Trends
Countries around the world are boosting their battery storage capacity. This helps them meet renewable energy goals.
China led the market with 67% of global BESS deployments. This was due to provincial mandates and falling battery costs. The U.S. and Canada followed, installing nearly 40 GWh, with California contributing half of this capacity.
Meanwhile, Europe’s battery storage market could exceed 50 GW by 2030, with an estimated €80 billion in investments supporting this expansion.
In the United States, battery storage capacity hit about 24 gigawatt-hours (GWh) in 2024. This is a 71% rise from the year before. Utility-scale battery capacity has seen rapid growth in the country, with over 20 gigawatts (GW) added in the past 4 years—equivalent to the capacity of 20 nuclear reactors.
This capacity may double to 40 GW by 2025. This shows how important battery storage is for a stronger grid and more renewable energy use.
These developments underscore the critical role of BESS in stabilizing the grid, reducing reliance on fossil fuels, and ensuring a consistent supply of renewable energy. SolarBank’s latest transaction positions the company at the forefront of this rapidly evolving battery storage market.
Bright Horizons: SolarBank’s Strategic Expansion
The Viridi BESS project aligns with SolarBank’s strategy to expand its portfolio of renewable energy assets across North America. The company plans to improve the reliability and efficiency of its solar systems. It will do this by using advanced battery storage solutions. This way, they can offer sustainable energy to different communities.
- As of February 20, 2025, SolarBank’s stock is trading at US$ 4.02, reflecting the market’s response to the company’s ongoing initiatives in the renewable energy sector.
With its expansion into battery storage, SolarBank is proactively addressing one of the biggest challenges in renewable energy—energy intermittency. By combining solar power with advanced storage solutions, the company is strengthening the foundation for a cleaner, more reliable energy system.
SolarBank is investing in BESS as demand for sustainable energy grows. This move will boost growth, attract new partnerships, and strengthen its leadership in renewable energy.
SolarBank’s partnership with Viridi shows its dedication to new renewable energy solutions. This effort helps in the larger goal of moving to a sustainable, low-carbon energy system. By repurposing a closed landfill into a productive solar and battery storage facility, the project not only provides clean energy to the Buffalo community but also sets a precedent.
This article contains forward-looking information. Please refer to the SolarBank press release entitled “SolarBank Partners with Viridi on Combined 3.06 MW Solar and 1.2 MWH Battery Energy Storage Project Located in Buffalo, New York.”
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The post From Waste to Watts: SolarBank and Viridi Intend to Transform a Landfill Into a Solar Powerhouse with Battery Storage appeared first on Carbon Credits.
The accounting differences that decide whether your nature investment shows up in inventory, in BVCM, or nowhere at all.
The question reaches a procurement team about three weeks before the next sustainability committee meeting. Someone has read about insetting. Someone else has just signed off on an offset purchase. The CSO wants to know if the two are interchangeable. The answer is no, and the GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard is the reason why.
This article walks through what each term means at audit-grade specificity, what the standards actually say about how each gets counted, and how to decide which tool fits which target. The insetting vs offsetting question is one of the most-searched in corporate climate strategy, and one of the most poorly answered. By the end of this piece, you should be able to brief a committee on the difference without notes.
The two definitions, in plain English
Offsetting means buying carbon credits generated outside your value chain and retiring them against your residual emissions. The reduction happens somewhere else, financed by you, and the credit is the receipt.
Insetting means investing in emission reductions or removals inside your own value chain, typically with suppliers, where the reduction is directly linked to the products and services you buy. The reduction happens inside the boundary of your Scope 3 inventory, and the accounting treatment is fundamentally different.
The shorthand from the University of Oxford’s Nature-based Insetting Initiative is useful: insetting is what you do with the supply chain you have; offsetting is what you do with the supply chain you do not have.
What the GHG Protocol Land Sector Standard actually says
The GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard, finalised in 2024 after a multi-year pilot, sets the rules for how land-based emission reductions and removals enter corporate inventories. The Standard distinguishes between inventory accounting (Scope 1, 2, and 3) and project or intervention accounting (a separate methodology for crediting).
For insetting, the practical implication is that supplier-level interventions, when properly measured and attributed, can reduce your Scope 3 category 1 (purchased goods and services) emissions in your inventory. The reduction is not a credit retired against the inventory; it is a lower inventory number, period.
For offsetting, the credit is retired separately. It can be reported as a contribution toward a net-zero claim under the SBTi Beyond Value Chain Mitigation framework or as part of a VCMI Carbon Integrity claim, but it does not lower the inventory number.
A practical consequence: if your Science Based Target requires a 50% absolute reduction in Scope 3 emissions by 2030, insetting moves you toward the target. Offsetting does not. This single point of difference reshapes the procurement decision.
When insetting counts toward Scope 3 (and when it does not)
Insetting counts toward Scope 3 only when several conditions are met:
- The intervention must occur with an entity in your value chain.
- The emissions reduction or removal must be measured against a defensible baseline.
- The reduction must be attributed to your share of that supplier’s output, not double-counted with other buyers.
- It must follow the inventory accounting rules in the GHG Protocol Land Sector Standard, not the project accounting rules used to generate credits.
The most common failure mode is double counting. If your supplier sells the same reduction as a credit on the voluntary market and also reports it to you as a Scope 3 reduction, the math breaks. The Standard requires you to address this risk, typically by purchasing and retiring the supplier-issued credit as part of your inventory or by contractual provisions that prevent the supplier from selling the reduction twice.
When insetting does not count toward Scope 3: when the intervention sits with a supplier you do not buy from, when the baseline is not defensible, when the attribution is unclear, or when the documentation does not survive audit. Those cases default to Beyond Value Chain Mitigation, which is still useful but operates on a different ledger.
The procurement and supplier engagement question
Insetting is harder than offsetting. That is the unfashionable truth most buyers eventually confront. Offsetting is a transaction; insetting is a relationship.
To run an insetting program, you need supplier mapping precise enough to know which farms or facilities sit at which Scope 3 boundary. You need an engagement model that gets suppliers to participate, which usually requires multi-year commitments and shared economics. You need an MRV architecture that measures the right things and produces audit-ready documentation. And you need a contractual structure that prevents double counting and protects both sides.
The trade-off you receive in return is significant. Reductions count against your inventory rather than your residual. Supplier relationships deepen, which protects sourcing continuity. Yield and quality improvements often follow regenerative interventions, which reduces your input cost over time. And the regulatory file, under CSRD, CSDDD, EUDR, and the SBTi FLAG Guidance, is materially stronger.
Choosing the right tool for the right target
A practical decision rule. If your target is a science-based Scope 3 reduction and you operate in a FLAG sector or source FLAG commodities, insetting is the structurally correct tool. If your target is a net-zero claim that includes neutralising hard-to-abate residual emissions outside your value chain, BVCM via high-integrity offsets is the structurally correct tool. Most companies with material Scope 3 exposure need both, in different proportions, sequenced over time.
The sequencing matters. Insetting takes longer to stand up but produces a permanent reduction in the inventory. Offsetting can be transacted faster but does not change the inventory and now sits under tighter claim restrictions. Treat them as complementary tools with different jobs, not as substitutes. The Accountability Framework Initiative and the IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions both provide useful guardrails for the insetting side, with biodiversity, human rights, and benefit-sharing requirements that go beyond carbon math.
If you are mapping a Scope 3 reduction roadmap and need to scope which interventions count toward your inventory versus which sit in Beyond Value Chain Mitigation, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help you structure a nature-based supply chain investment program that fits your FLAG exposure, your target architecture, and your audit horizon. Schedule a consultation.
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