Tesco signs deal to buy enough solar energy to power 144 large stores

Supermarket will buy almost two-thirds of the energy generated by the new £450m Cleve Hill solar park in Kent

Tesco has struck a deal to buy enough solar power to run 144 of its large supermarkets, buying almost two-thirds of the entire electricity output from the Cleve Hill solar park in Kent.

The £450m solar park is being built on farmland near Faversham by Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners, a London-based firm that invests in renewable and low-carbon energy in the US, UK and Australia.

The site will provide Tesco with up to 10% of its UK electricity demand over 15 years. Tesco said the amount of clean energy generated would be enough to power 144 of its large stores for a year.

Cleve Hill, on the north Kent coast, is a solar and battery storage project that will have a capacity of 373 megawatts. Construction began early last year and it is expected to be up and running by the start of next year. Tesco said it was the UK’s largest corporate power purchase deal for a solar farm.

Ken Murphy, Tesco’s chief executive, hailed the deal as a “significant step” in its journey towards carbon neutrality across its business by 2035.

The site will feature more than 560,000 solar panels – some as tall as buses – and energy storage infrastructure. The French state-owned utility EDF will provide power balancing services.

Over the past five years, Tesco has announced several energy projects, helping the retailer source green electricity directly from windfarms and solar parks across the UK. With the addition of Cleve Hill, these power purchase agreements will cover 45% of Tesco UK’s – or 36% of the group’s – expected electricity demand in 2030.

Keith Gains, managing director and UK regional lead at Quinbrook said Cleve Hill was a “blueprint for the next generation of energy transition infrastructure in the UK”.

Renewable energy is seen as a crucial element in the UK’s plans to end its contribution to the climate crisis by building a carbon neutral economy by 2050.

Other major companies have moved to buy nuclear energy in recent weeks.

Tesco’s move comes a day after Google signed a deal to buy energy from a fleet of mini nuclear reactors to generate the power needed for the rise in use of artificial intelligence. The US tech corporation has ordered six or seven small nuclear reactors from California’s Kairos Power, with the first due to be completed by 2030 and the remainder by 2035.

Google hopes the move will provide a low-carbon solution to power datacentres, which require huge volumes of electricity. The company, owned by Alphabet, said nuclear provided “a clean, round-the-clock power source that can help us reliably meet electricity demands”.

Last month, Microsoft struck a deal for a nuclear reactor to power its expanding AI operations. However, the Three Mile Island site in Pennsylvania was the location of the most serious nuclear meltdown and radiation leak in US history in March 1979 and has been in a decommissioning phase.

The reactor will be reactivated after its owners, Constellation Energy, signed a 20-year power purchase agreement to supply Microsoft’s energy-hungry datacentres.

Cover photo: By The Guardian