McDonald's, Chicago, announced its commitment to energy efficiency and renewable energy with a large-scale virtual power purchase agreement.

With this deal, McDonald’s is investing in two projects—a wind farm and a solar farm—to expand the amount of renewable energy available in the United States. Once built and online, the total renewable energy generated by the projects will power U.S. communities.

This investment means McDonald’s is said to add more renewable energy to the power supply than any other U.S. restaurant company to date – enough to equal more than 2,500 McDonald’s restaurants-worth of electricity.

McDonald’s portion of these two renewable energy projects will help to prevent 700,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions – equivalent to planting more than 11 million trees or taking over 140,000 cars off the road for a year.

These investments are also expected to move McDonald’s 16% closer to its Climate Action target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 36% from McDonald’s restaurants and offices.

McDonald’s restaurants in Austria, France, Germany, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands and UK/Ireland are already at or close to sourcing 100% of the energy needed to power their restaurants from renewable sources as of 2018.