Nottinghamshire County Council is investing £800,000 on solar panels on a number of its corporate buildings to reduce its carbon footprint and generate a new income stream from electricity that is fed back into the national grid.

The plans were approved by the Council's Cabinet at its meeting yesterday, 7 December.

The Government introduced the Feed in Tariffs Scheme in April 2010 which pays producers of renewable electricity for every unit of electricity that they produce.

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Payments for generated electricity are guaranteed for 25 years and are linked to the Retail Price Index.

The Council estimates that the there will be an annual 8 percent return on the investment over 25 years, which works out as £2.01m in income over this period.

The authority will also benefit from free electricity generated by the panels, which will create savings in excess of £1,000 per year for each site, and a total carbon dioxide emission reduction of 150 tonnes a year.

The Council has already installed solar panels at the Turbine Business Innovation Centre in Worksop in 2005 and at Eastwood Young People's Centre which opened earlier this year.

There are also plans to incorporate solar panels into the new West Bridgford Library, the new Carlton Digby Special School in Mapperley and the new Highways depot at Bilsthorpe.

The programme to install the panels is set to start in January and will be completed by the end of March.

(CD)