Sainsbury's, one of the biggest U.K. retailers, has just completed its 210th rooftop PV system. The supermarket chain has now installed 100,000 solar panels across its stores, totaling 22 MW, enough to cover 35 football pitches.
Sainsburys operates over 1,106 supermarkets and convenience stores in the U.K. as well as online grocery and general merchandise outlets. It also jointly owns Sainsburys Bank with Lloyds Banking Group in addition to two property joint ventures.
Sainsbury's milestone makes it one of the largest multi-roof solar panel operators in Europe. Paul Crewe, Sainsburys head of Engineering, Sustainability, Energy and Environment, said that over the past four years Sainsbury's supermarkets have “achieved a 9.1% absolute reduction in electricity use despite a 25% increase in space, and were really seeing the benefits from using our underutilized space for solar panels, and from the other renewable technologies weve installed.”
Crewe added that renewable types of technology “are fundamental to the sustainability of our business and there is a strong commercial case for using each technology. They are helping us cut carbon emissions and energy bills and achieve the environmental targets we set. It's good news for the environment and is supporting job creation in the U.K.s renewable energy sector.”
Popular content
Energy and Climate Change Minister Greg Barker welcomed the news during a visit to Sainsburys store at London Colney in St. Albans last week, saying “the coalition [government] is committed to helping businesses across the U.K. cut energy waste and become more energy efficient.”
Sainsburys investment in onsite renewable energy technologies is part of its ambitious sustainability target to reduce its operational carbon emissions by 30% absolute, and 65% relative, by 2020 compared to 2005. This is part of a broader target of an absolute carbon reduction of 50% by 2030. The company said the PV installations would reduce its total CO2 emissions by an estimated 9,785 tons per year.
The group recently launched its Sainsbury's Energy division with British Gas, offering sustainable energy solutions to homes across the U.K. The company says on its website that a British home that installs a 3 kW rooftop solar PV system could result in combined average annual earnings and savings of £628 (726, $964).
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
Share
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.