Whitbread has installed solar PV across over 20% of the Premier Inn estate. This includes over 180 buildings totalling 4.7 MW peak power. Purchasing renewable electricity as a standard means Whitbread can generate 4.4 GWh of renewable electricity each year ourselves each year.
Solar PV has been a core part of Whitbread’s wider investment in energy for the past decade to help the business manage costs, get strong returns on capital and move towards the net zero carbon target by 2040.
It forms part of our wider transition plan to net zero which was published at the end of April 2023 and has helped us meet our 50.1% reduction against our baseline year to date.
The overarching objective is to use as little energy as possible, and to ensure the energy we do use is as clean as possible. We do this by purchasing renewable electricity, running a mature energy efficiency programme across our estate, trialling electric alternatives such as Air Source Heat Pumps as well as building our hotels to high environmental standards (BREEAM Excellent or above) and installing PVs.
PV installations have been delivered most years in the past decade alongside other energy investments that give a good balance of reduced demand and clean generation.
Efficiency projects like LED lighting, voltage optimisation and heating controls help us minimise the energy we need to use but we will always need to use some.
PV generation means the power we cannot offset through better controls and efficiency is generated renewably on site wherever there is a cost-effective way to do this.
We started with our most optimal sites - buildings in the south of England with large south-facing roofs. As we have come to less favourable sites (orientation, latitude, roof space) we still find reducing costs and increasing efficiencies allow us to maintain strong paybacks. We now have installations across all parts of the UK and expect to install more this year.
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239 systems spread across 180 sites - as the efficiency of PV panels has increased and cost has reduced, we have been back to install second systems at several buildings where roof space allowed .
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4.4 GWh of onsite renewable generation that we no longer need to pull from the grid (Whitbread do buy renewable electricity but this is not as good as generating with renewables) .
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Thanks to the easy to prove returns with measurable costs and performance figures, we now do a rollout of additional sites most years and intend to continue with more this year.