How Much Does Your Council Invest in Solar Power?

Have you ever wondered how much councils spend on renewable energy?

We have put together a map of the UK that shows the work cities in the UK are doing to improve their solar energy production.

Solar energy production and investment in solar power are indicated here on this map, along with the number of council owned properties fitted with solar panels.

Newcastle have a huge number of properties fitted with solar panels, though it is Peterborough City Council who are generating the most from solar energy.

Since 2015, Portsmouth and Leeds have made the largest investments into solar out of all the cities in Great Britain.

Energy kWh

0

5m+

Buildings

0

500+

Investment

£0

50k+

Methodology

We looked at three key factors to determine which councils are performing best in terms of solar energy in their city: number of PV fitted properties, investment and energy production. For energy production and investment, we only included figures since the start of the 2014-2015 financial year.

Specifically, energy refers to the solar energy produced by council owned properties – in kilowatt hours (kWh) – that was available for use by city councils. This number was then measured against the population of that city or borough, to find the amount of energy produced per capita (100,000).

Investment includes any expenditure on construction or maintenance of any new or existing solar energy projects. We then took the amount of investment and divided it by the council’s total expenditure on housing and environmental services for the same time period. This number was then multiplied by a million to give each city or borough a number for investment per million pounds of council budget.

All information for investment, energy produced, and number of PV fitted buildings was received by FOI requests to city/borough councils.

Data Sources

Population statistics:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/datasets/populationestimatesforukenglandandwalesscotlandandnorthernireland

Council budgets:

England: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/local-authority-capital-expenditure-receipts-and-financing

Scotland: https://www.gov.scot/collections/local-government-finance-statistics/

Wales: https://gov.wales/local-authority-revenue-and-capital-outturn-expenditure

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