Charter Hall Retail REIT (ASX: CQR) has entered into a Solar Power Purchasing agreement with Clean Peak Energy and Solgen, who will provide a solar energy system across 28 shopping centres including Bay Plaza. 

The partnership with Solgen reached another exciting milestone earlier this year with Bay Plaza Solar System ‘switching on’ the system. 

Hayley Albertson-Hyde, Centre Manager of Bay Plaza, switched on the system in January 2020. The Bay Plaza System consists of 864 panels (242kW). The project will see Charter Hall install 32.6GWh of solar generation capacity across the 28 centres or a total of 9.4 hectares of solar panels.  This is enough energy to power 4,300 homes across the local communities, including 24 local homes in Pialba.

Hayley Albertson-Hyde states, “We know sustainability is important for our stakeholders, from investors and tenant customers to the communities we operate in. The partnership our retail shopping centres have entered into with Clean Peak and Solgen Energy Group will help the Group realise our short-term sustainability targets.

 “The solar project also provides us with a deeper understanding of our energy demand profile and how to better manage electricity costs providing a high level of cost certainty in a volatile market for the Hervey Bay community.”

Charter Hall’s Sustainability Strategy, for the future, is designed to reflect how our business integrates our sustainability and community goals into our everyday business practices. Charter Hall has strong sustainability credentials with Australia’s largest cross-sector Green Star property portfolio footprint, which continues to grow as the Group’s office and industrial developments seek and achieve Green Star ratings.