Keele students to benefit from £8m renewable energy park

The park at Keele University combines 12,500 solar panels and two wind turbines

Students will have up to half their electricity generated from renewable sources after an £8m energy centre officially opened.

The Keele University park combines two wind turbines with 12,500 solar panels.

The centre will save the equivalent of removing 800 cars from roads each year, the university said.

"[This] is a fantastic thing for the university and a fantastic thing for reducing our carbon emissions," Professor Zoe Robinson said.

More than 10,000 students study at the university with many living on the campus and one of them, Claudia Yeboah, said it was great they will have greener energy.

"If all the students were trying to be greener as a whole it would make a very big difference in the UK," she said.

Student Claudia Yeboah said if all the country's students tried to be greener "it would make a very big difference"

Fellow student Mehran Ahmadi said: "I am glad to see my university is doing this and to be honest I feel less guilty about using the energy with the whole global warming going on."

Outgoing university chancellor and environmental campaigner, Sir Jonathon Porritt, said he was confident other groups would follow their lead.

"I have no doubt this will have a huge multiplier effect now in terms of encouraging other communities," he said.

The university's outgoing chancellor Sir Jonathon Porritt said he was confident other groups would follow Keele's lead

As well as the wind turbines and solar panels, the park includes an industrial-sized battery to store the generated energy.

The site will be managed and financed by energy firm, EQUANS, which signed a 25-year partnership with Keele in December 2020.