Tesco and Shell have bought all the electricity from a countryside solar farm that gained planning permission after the developer said it ‘could provide clean electricity to power over 102,000 homes’.
Furious campaigners claim the supermarket and oil firm should be generating their own power by putting solar panels on their stores and petrol stations.
The Kent marshes are being covered with 560,000 solar panels to create Britain’s biggest solar farm, with a total capacity of 373 megawatts (MW) – half the output of a small gas-powered power station.
Some panels will be built on steel frames almost as high as a double-decker bus because of the flood risk on the 900-acre site at Cleve Hill near Canterbury.
Batteries to store excess power of up to 150MW will also be installed.
Stock photo of solar panels (solar cell) in solar farm with sun lighting to create the ‘clean’ electric power
Tesco and Shell have bought all the electricity from a countryside solar farm that gained planning permission after the developer said it ‘could provide clean electricity to power over 102,000 homes’
Stock photo of Shell logo. Tesco has signed an agreement to buy 65 per cent of the output, enough for 144 of its supermarkets, while Shell is taking the remaining 35 per cent, which represents ten per cent of its UK energy demand
Tesco has signed an agreement to buy 65 per cent of the output, enough for 144 of its supermarkets, while Shell is taking the remaining 35 per cent, which represents ten per cent of its UK energy demand.
In reality, the electricity produced at Cleve Hill will go into the National Grid rather than directly to Tesco and Shell, which have simply signed an agreement for an amount of green power based on the total generated at the site.
But critics are angry that the firms aren’t doing more to make their own power – and that at the planning stage the scheme was heralded by Quinbrook, its developer, as having the capacity to power more than 100,000 homes.
Vicky Ellis, of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said such marketing may have misled locals, adding: ‘We suspect this is an example of greenwashing and a PR exercise by major industry.’
Tesco chief executive Ken Murphy said: ‘Cleve Hill solar park joins a number of other Power Purchase Agreements we’ve announced over the last five years.’
Rupen Tanna, of Shell, said it was an important part of the UK’s net-zero ambitions.
Keith Gains, of Quinbrook, said it was ‘proud of developing Cleve Hill’.