General Motors' largest gasoline-burning vehicles — pickups and full-size SUVs — will soon be built, ironically, at plants powered by wind, not fuel.

GM wants to power all its global facilities with 100-percent renewable energy by 2050. GM will be at 20 percent of that goal by year-end, the automaker said Monday.

"We do want to be known as a green company; that’s one of the key reasons we’re doing this as well as for price stability," Rob Threlkeld, GM’s global manager of renewable energy told the Free Press. "You don’t get the price spikes this way, like you do with fuel, and it reduces the environment footprint of the vehicle you’re driving.”

GM, which is ranked 76 out of 100 of the largest green power users by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has partnered with CMS Enterprises, the unregulated entity of Consumers Energy, to match electricity needs from the wind farms that entity owns.

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GM's decades-long approach to sourcing renewable energy has resulted in "millions of dollars in savings" for the automaker, Threlkeld said.

GM's latest efforts target wind farms in Ohio, Illinois and Texas.

On Oct. 1, Northwest Ohio Wind Farm went into operation. It generates 100 megawatts of power to meet the demand of GM's manufacturing operations in Ohio and Indiana. In Lordstown, Ohio, for example, GM builds the Chevrolet Cruze sedan.

In December, HillTopper Wind Farm in Illinois will come online to generate another 100 megawatts of power for operations in Ohio and Indiana. In Fort Wayne, Indiana, GM builds the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups.

In total, seven sites in Ohio and Indianawill meet the need for electricity with "clean energy," Threlkeld said.

On Oct. 9, GM will add Cactus Flats Wind Farm in Texas to the mix.

This 148-megawatt facility will power GM's Arlington Assembly plant in Arlington, Texas. At Arlington, which has operated since 1954, GM builds the Chevrolet Tahoe, Chevrolet Suburban, GMC Yukon, GMC Yukon XL and Cadillac Escalade full-sized SUVs. It will use 50 megawatts from Cactus Flats.

“Ohio and Texas, are deregulated markets, so you can buy electricity from any resource there,” Threlkeld said. “Wind and solar are the lowest cost resource. We’re buying into long-term contracts that have no fuel components, so we can put price stability in the cost to build these vehicles.”

The energy sourced from Cactus Flats along with power procured from the Los Mirasoles Wind Farm, also in Texas, will meet 100 percent of the electricity demand of 16 GM offices and facilities and more than 10,000 GM and GM subsidiary employees across Texas and the southeast, Threlkeld said.

"Manufacturing plants are the biggest use of energy for us," Threlkeld said. "The paint shops are huge users of energy. The traditional paint shop uses an average of 60 to 70 percent of the plant's total energy consumption."

Threlkeld said a typical assembly plant requires 120 million to 220 million kilowatt hours of energy to operate each year.

To put that in perspective, a typical U.S. household uses 10,000 kilowatt hours of energy a year.

Contact Jamie L. LaReau: 313-222-2149 or jlareau@freepress.com