The Environmental Excellence award in the 2024 National rail awards went to Govia Thameslink Railway and Energy Garden for the UK rail’s first community-owned solar cooperative installation.
A Highly Commended was awarded to Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (Headbolt Lane), Network Rail and the Green Block (On-site recycling machine), Sicut Enterprises (Sicut Sleepers).
Public transport has long been regarded as one of the principal solutions to the climate crisis. However, GTR has taken this one step further through its partnership with not-for-profit community benefit society Energy Garden, which opened a 578-panel solar array on the roof of Streatham Hill depot in London in 2021.
Using this under-utilised space to generate clean energy came at no upfront cost to the operator. Energy Garden recoups its investment by selling £50 shares to the local community and ploughing 100% of the profit made on selling the electricity back into other projects and initiatives including educational programmes.
Over 20-years, the roof is estimated to generate more than four gigawatt-hours of electricity, avoiding 884 tonnes of carbon dioxide from being emitted into the atmosphere.
Having proven the concept at Streatham Hill, three more schemes have been given the go ahead at GTR’s even larger depots at Bedford, Selhurst and Three Bridges. Once they are completed, a total of 6,000 additional solar panels will generate 42.6GWh in the next two decades, saving over 9,000 tonnes of CO2.
The judges said: “Depots have vast and usually not very pretty roofs, and this scheme can be replicated on a widescale, at no cost to the railway.
“Two people – Roger Perkins from GTR and Agamemnon Otero from Energy Garden, are making it work brilliantly and it is now being rolled out at other locations, making it a very worthy winner.”
Go to our results story for a list of all the winners at the 2024 National Rail Awards, together with more pictures from the event at the JW Marriott Grosvenor House hotel, Park Lane, London on 12th September.
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