The Manchester City Football Club, located in Manchester, England, announced it will be adding solar panels to its training facility – the City Football Academy – to power its operations with renewable energy and reach carbon net zero by 2030.
The Football Club will install over 10,800 solar panels to generate up to 4.39 MWh of renewable energy each year.
For the last eight years, the Football Club has purchased 100% renewable electricity under a power purchase agreement, but this project will now allow the Club to produce enough of its own energy to completely offset the City Football Academy’s annual usage. Any remaining energy left over will be shared with the Etihad Stadium, the sixth-largest football stadium in England.
More than 3,000 solar panels will be installed on the roof of the 7,000-person-capacity Joie Stadium, which is home to Manchester City Women. 3,942 panels will be installed on the rooftops of other facilities on site, such as the First Team and Academy Building, and an additional 3,830 panels will be installed on frames over footpaths and pitch-side areas of the City Football Academy.
The solar panels will be installed and managed by Clearvolt, a Manchester-based renewable energy developer, and the Football Club projects that the panels will be fully operational by the end of 2024.
“It is with great excitement that we can reveal our plans to completely offset the power required to run the day-to-day operations of the City Football Academy by becoming one of football’s largest producers of self-supplied, renewable energy,” said Pete Bradshaw, Manchester City Football Club’s Director of Sustainability.
“As we look ahead on our roadmap to being net carbon zero by 2030, we know that the production and consumption of renewable energy has an incredibly important role to play, which is why we are delighted at the prospect of installing over 10,800 solar panels at our home in Manchester,” Bradshaw added.
