Whitbread plc : Solar-The-Century!

PREMIER INN USES THE SUN'S ENERGY TO DRIVE DOWN CARBON EMISSIONS

Whitbread, Premier Inn's parent company, is to become more sustainable by using the sun's energy to help power a number of its hotels and restaurants.  The initiative is part of Whitbread's strategy of achieving a 26% reduction in its carbon emissions by 2020.

Ten Premier Inn hotels across southern England have been fitted with solar photovoltaic panels that are expected to generate over 84 kilowatts (per year) of electricity and save more than 42 tonnes of carbon dioxide every year.

Chris George, Head of Energy and Environment at Whitbread Hotels and Restaurants, said:  "As a leading hospitality business, we have an extensive estate of restaurants and hotels where we can employ innovative carbon saving technologies to drive down our carbon emissions and reduce our energy and carbon bills.  Solar photovoltaic panels have performed well at our latest sustainable hotel at Camborne in Cornwall. Rolling out the technology across other selected properties will boost our environmental performance even further and takes us a step closer towards achieving our carbon reduction targets."

Whitbread has commissioned energy efficiency supplier Anesco to install the solar photovoltaic panels.  The energy generated will be supplied back to the ten hotels and restaurants to lower their energy consumption, or made available to the national grid when energy demand from the hotels is low.

The ten Premier Inn hotels with new solar photovoltaic panels installed include Liskeard, Fraddon (near Newquay), St Austell, Helston, Truro, Tring, Bodmin, Barnstable and Lockyers Quay and Sutton Harbour in Plymouth.