Newark and Sherwood District Council's Cabinet has approved plans to install solar photovoltaic panels at Gladstone House in Newark and the Broadleaf Hotel in Ollerton, both under the Housing with Care scheme. At the same time, an additional £217,000 will be added to the Capital Human Resources Authority's investment program, which will be funded from the Major Repairs Reserve.
The recommendations follow an energy review which identified several areas where energy savings could be made, including the installation of solar panels and improvements to energy supply tariffs.
Gladstone House has a total of 60 apartments and the Broadleaf Hotel has a total of 30 apartments, both of which have housing care schemes. The housing care plans for both buildings include the provision of heated internal corridors, lounge areas with air conditioning, commercial kitchens, and laundry facilities. However, due to the high energy consumption of the above services, landlord costs have risen. At the same time, global energy prices have risen, thereby driving up the cost of electricity in both regions. However, it also provides an opportunity for both areas to switch to environmentally friendly energy sources and reduce the public costs created for tenants by energy-intensive facilities.
Cabinet member Keith Melton said, "It's the responsibility of the whole council, it's the responsibility of the whole area, and what I want to do is promote solar panels, promote renewable energy at a rapid pace."
The installation of solar panels is expected to generate more than 225,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, thereby reducing carbon emissions by more than 4.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. The scheme is in line with the Council's commitment to achieve net zero carbon emissions following the declaration of a climate emergency in 2019. Savings from the installation of solar panels will be monitored and reported through budget monitoring in 2024/25 after installation.
"I fully support the recommendations in this report." Emma Oldham said, "We must do our part to protect these new energy sites so that we can cope with rising and unpredictable energy costs."
During the community survey, most tenants expressed positive views that installing solar panels would help protect the environment, and also believed that solar panels would reduce the community's energy bills, further lowering the service charges that tenants would have to pay.
At the same time, the Council has also put forward several initiatives aimed at reducing or offsetting its carbon emissions, including a commitment to invest over £1 million in greening initiatives by the end of the current financial year, and the Council has also put forward a decarbonization plan for its buildings, which will see the installation of solar panels on five sites in the area and will invest £2.6 million in support of a decarbonization plan for social housing, which will see tenants who have oil or LPG heating systems replace the energy in their systems with energy from oil or liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). tenants who use oil or LPG heating systems to replace the energy in their systems with carbon-neutral alternatives.