The UK’s largest retailer Tesco is installing solar panels on stores across the country, as it looks to scale up its use of renewable energy.
The supermarket chain said it has ambitions to have solar panels on 100 of its large stores within the next three years – and the onsite power generation is expected to manage increased electricity demand and higher energy costs.
According to Tesco, the initiative will form part of a number of new Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) with renewables investors. Tesco has already launched a series of onsite and offsite PPAs to increase the amount of renewable electricity it can generate directly.
Tesco in Thetford has already been fitted with more than 1,000 solar panels as part of a PPA with renewables investors, Atrato Onsite Energy, and the work to place solar panels on stores in Stevenage, Wisbech, Kings Lynn and Stockport is set to begin before the end of 2023.
Thetford is already generating c.300MWh of electricity per year, and Tesco expects the aforementioned four stores to generate c.275MWh, c.660MWh, c.530MWh and c.275MWh of electricity each year, respectively.
Some 40 Tesco stores already have solar panels fitted – generating over 10.5GWh of solar electricity in the last year.
Onsite renewables like solar panels on stores take pressure off the wider national grid infrastructure, and Tesco said the renewable energy that will be generated by this programme will help it work towards its “carbon neutral” across own operations by 2035 target.
Long-term PPAs are central to sourcing renewable electricity, guaranteeing procurement typically over a 20-year period.
Ken Murphy, Tesco group CEO, said: “As we all face into the effects of climate change, scaling up our use of clean renewable energy has never been more important.”
Gurpreet Gujral, managing director at Atrato Partners, which is the company installing solar panels at Tesco’s Thetford store, remarked: “We look forward to supporting the business over the coming years to bring clean, traceable energy to more sites up and down the country.”
[Image credit: Green Retail World]
