M&G Real Estate has announced it is installing what will be the UK’s largest shopping centre solar facility on the roof of The Galleries shopping centre in Washington, Tyne and Wear, in the North-East of England.
The installation, comprising 1,317 panels, will cover an area of 41,000 sq ft (3,800 m2), the equivalent of a professional football pitch, of otherwise unused space at the centre. The panels are expected to generate 315,00 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of clean electricity every year, enough to power 68 households for a year, and save 165 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
‘We are proud of this latest strategic investment at The Galleries that will set a new bar for environmental best practice,’ said John Duxbury, head of retail and asset management at M&G Real Estate. ‘The creation of renewable energy from equipment installed in otherwise unused areas will help it become an exemplar centre nationally as it markedly lessens the demand for energy from carbon emitting sources.’
M&G Real Estate expects that between 95% and 100% of the electricity generated by the new system will be consumed on site and sold to the centre to repay the total cost of the project – a ‘considerable upfront investment’ of £410,000 - over a nine-year payback period. Cushman & Wakefield’s Energy, Infrastructure and Sustainability team is managing the development and delivery of the project for M&G Real Estate.
‘As a business, we are committed to reducing the amount of energy we use and to shifting the balance so that our power comes from renewable sources more of the time,’ Duxbury said. Since 2013 M&G Real Estate has achieved a 29% energy reduction across the shopping centres it owns and manages, with a total saving of over £600,000 for retailers and investor returns.
The Washington announcement is the latest in a series of initiatives by M&G Real Estate to improve the energy efficiency of its UK shopping centre portfolio. Others include the roll-out of energy monitoring systems which were used at the Manchester Arndale centre to reduce electricity consumption by 30% since 2013.
