By Chris Clark, Director, Emtec Energy

A ROOF the size of a football pitch, covered with solar panels, has the capacity to generate 1.3GWh of electricity every year: enough to power around 300 homes. Imagine having that resource but choosing to waste it. Frustratingly, that’s something I see almost every day.

Emtec recently looked at 20 schools in Scotland, on the roofs of which the developers or owners had opted to install solar photovoltaic panels. That study highlighted a huge disparity between the potential and actual capacity of the solar systems which were eventually installed. In some cases, only two per cent of the available space had been used – the equivalent of taking that football pitch-sized roof and only fitting panels inside one six-yard box.

The benefits of solar power are clear: savings on electricity bills, income from exporting power and reduced carbon emissions. Within the last six years, the price of installing solar in the UK has dropped by a massive 75 per cent, meaning that even with today’s reduced government support the technology is still a no-brainer. That’s particularly true for new-build property, where roofers can install panels at the same time as traditional roof coverings at a fraction of the cost of retrofitting. Yet time and again we see schools, hospitals and council buildings wasting the opportunity they have.

The project mentioned above had the potential to install 125kW of solar, or 500 panels. Instead, they chose to fit just 1.5kW, leaving 98.8per cent of the roof space empty.

Too often we see projects which start out with good intentions, only for the installation of renewable energy technology to fall at the first hurdle, a victim of short-term cost savings at the expense of vastly greater longer-term energy bill benefits. From our study, only one building had used more than half (54.6 per cent) of the roof space available, suggesting a serious lack of growth or commitment to renewables. While the availability of room on the electricity grid may sometimes make filling a whole roof with solar panels impractical, the issue appears to be with businesses and local authorities opting for installations that meet the minimum requirements of a building’s specification, rather than facing these barriers head on.

While local authorities have been the victim of year-on-year budget cuts, some have still managed to overcome these issues using innovative funding streams ranging from financial incentives at government level to community-led benefit schemes that can even reward local people and investors. The latter has been highlighted in our recently-completed Edinburgh Solar Co-op framework, which saw 1.4MW of solar PV installed across 24 council-owned properties; mainly primary, secondary and special needs schools.

This was a community-led project organised by the Edinburgh Community Solar Co-operative and funded by investors in Edinburgh and throughout the UK, with advice from Energy4All. Those who invested in the scheme will receive annual interest on their investment (capped at 5pere cent, increasing with RPI), with any surplus profit invested into a Community Benefit Fund. This is just one of many projects that are operating throughout the UK, showing this model is not only possible, but very beneficial to all those involved.

Solar doesn’t have to be a tick-box exercise. Local authorities can grab hold of the opportunity presented by their vacant roof spaces to provide new revenue streams and reduce carbon emissions.

We need to see more projects like the Edinburgh Solar Co-op and we need to see Scotland’s public sector doing more to actively help to slow down climate change.

* Chris Clark will speak at Scottish Renewables’ Solar Conference, to be held in Edinburgh on September 6: bit.ly/SRSOLAR17