Babergh council is halfway through installing £2.8m worth of green energy measures at its leisure centres – providing them with renewable energy and slashing CO2 emissions.

Works have completed this week to install a mixture of both solar PV panels and an air source heat pump, at the council's leisure centres and depot in Wenham, in line with their climate change ambitions.

The council-owned sites and measures include:

Hadleigh Pool and Leisure (380 solar panels generating 148.2 kW)

Wenham Depot (56 solar panels generating 21.8kW)

The changes, carried out by CorEnergy, enable the centres to reduce their demand on the energy grid and begin to transition away from fossil-fuelled heating systems, by powering them with renewables.

They are expected to save 269.9 tonnes of CO2e per year - a 5.6% reduction in the councils' annual carbon emissions – as well as reduce the total amount of energy needed to run the centres.

Works were made possible thanks to £1.4m in funding from the Government's Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme, which supports capital energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation projects within public sector non-domestic buildings.

The councils also received a £25k Government Low Carbon Skills Fund grant to carry out feasibility work to determine the most appropriate measures for each site.

Cllr Elisabeth Malvisi, cabinet member for climate change, biodiversity, and sustainable transport at Babergh District Council, said: "This is another major step and milestone towards achieving the actions set out in our Carbon Reduction Management Plan – helping to make Babergh greener and cleaner.

"Decarbonising some of our major assets like our leisure centres moves us one step closer to our ambition to be carbon neutral by 2030, while also supporting improved health and wellbeing for our communities."

Tracey Loynds, development director at Abbeycroft Leisure, said: "We welcome the council's latest introduction of green energy measures at Hadleigh Pool and Leisure, and Kingfisher, helping to provide the centres with renewable electricity.

"Sustainable solutions such as these are innovative and warmly received by our members as well."

The next £1.4m investment to install trial solar carport technology at two of the centres - providing further additional power to the centres, EV charging points and reduced emissions - is due to be completed in Spring 2022.

All the councils' leisure centres were moved to certified green energy tariffs back in April 2021 – marking a further step in their Carbon Reduction Management Plan.