Jaguar Land Rover has completed the installation of the largest rooftop solar panel array of United kingdom at its new state-of-the art Engine Manufacturing Centre at i54 South Staffordshire. The all-new plant has been designed with sustainability embedded throughout and has recently been awarded BREEAM’s ‘Excellent’ rating for the design stage of the assessment for sustainable buildings.
More than 21,000 photovoltaic panels, with a capacity of 5.8MW, have been fixed to the roof of the Engine Manufacturing Centre with plans to increase this to over 6.3MW by the end of 2014. It is estimated that the system will be generating more than 30 percent of energy requirements of Engine Manufacturing Centre. This is the equivalent to the energy needed to power more than 1600 homes. The photovoltaic panels will be reducing the facility’s CO2 footprint by over 2400 tons per year.
Trevor Leeks, Operations Director at Engine Manufacturing Centre, said, “Our world-class facility showcases the latest sustainable innovations and technologies. The completion of United Kingdom’s biggest rooftop solar panel installation here at the Engine Manufacturing Centre is just one example of this. “As the first manufacturer to win the ‘Responsible Business of the Year’ 2013, environmental innovation lies at the heart of Jaguar Land Rover’s business.”
Based at the heart of United Kingdom, the modern Engine Manufacturing Centre is the first new facility, which JLR Rover has built from the ground up. The site symbolizes an investment of more than £500 million and will be creating nearly 1400 new jobs by the time the plant reaches full capacity. The world-class plant will be manufacturing the first family of advanced technology, premium powerplants, Ingenium, to be fully designed and built in-house by JLR for exclusive use in the automaker’s future vehicles. The Jaguar XE, introducing next year, will be the first vehicle equipped with these four-cylinder engines.
The Engine Manufacturing Centre of Jaguar Land Rover uses cutting-edge lighting and heating systems designed and engineered for minimizing energy demand through the use of insulated cladding, for harnessing natural ventilation through the use of automatic louvers and for maximizing daylight through the roof design. Extensive energy monitoring facilities in the plant continually analyze the amount of energy being used and identify opportunities for reducing that energy consumption, for both natural gas and electricity.
Outside of the building, Jaguar Land Rover plans to create an ecological corridor across the bottom of its site. The corridor will be designed for encouraging the natural movement of species from one side of the site to the other. In addition, there are plans to install features such as habitat piles, boxes, insect houses and dead wood stumps to encourage invertebrates, small mammals, bats, birds and amphibians to the site.
Jaguar Land Rover won Business in the Community’s ‘Responsible Business of the Year 2013’ for placing environmental innovation at the heart of its business strategy, embedding sustainability at every stage of product development process and all levels of the business. This week JLR is celebrating ‘Responsible Business Week’ as a part of Business in Community’s national week-long campaign dedicated to sustainable business.
