Office furniture maker, Steelcase not only has agreed to purchase renewable energy credits from a wind farm in Texas, it also will pay a premium for the five-year naming rights.
Forget buying the naming rights to a stadium or music venue. That’s old hat.
Steelcase said it will name the farm "Wege Wind Energy Farm, provided by Steelcase" in honor of the family company’s founder and environmentalist, Peter Wege. It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but it gets the point across.
"This is a new business model, and it could attract any brand that wants to be linked with sustainability," Ted Rose, vice president for business development for Renewable Choice Energy, which led the transaction and serves as the marketer for the project, according a New York Times article. "Imagine the G.M. wind farm, the Apple wind farm – it’s not unthinkable at all."
John Deere Renewables, the wind energy development unit of Deer & Co. (NYSE: DE) owns the 10 megawatts wind farm in Panhandle, Texas.
Bradley Johnson, John Deere’s director of business development said several companies had expressed interest in naming rights. He added that premium prices for naming rights will enable Deere to undertake projects that are too small to be economically practical.
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