In a keynote address today at the 2007 Ceres Conference in Boston, Baxter Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Robert L. Parkinson, Jr. announced that  in recent weeks Baxter has purchased renewable energy certificates equivalent to the 15.5 million kilowatt hours of electricity used on an annual basis at its corporate headquarters campus located in Deerfield, Illinois.

Parkinson also said that Baxter has established new minimum energy efficiency standards to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at all of its facilities, resulting in savings and cost avoidance approaching $10 million a year.

Baxter purchased the renewable energy certificates from Constellation NewEnergy. While the facility is buying RECs and doesn’t directly receive wind power, Parkinson said that a number of Baxter facilities use alternative or renewable energy, such as solar, biodiesel and biomass, and that some of these initiatives are not currently practical at the company’s headquarters campus.

Baxter’s headquarters campus covers 100 acres, and includes 654,000 square feet of office space housing approximately 1,500 employees. It relies on electricity for 98 percent of its energy needs, which the company is buying RECs for. An additional two percent of Baxter’s energy use at its headquarters comes from natural gas. The company says it has purchased credits on the Chicago Climate Exchange for its gas use.