Gloucestershire-based family business Markey Group generated more than 60 per cent of its own electricity in September, thanks to a £700,000 investment and the work of four other county businesses.

Initially established in 1963 by the late Brendan Markey as a local building company, the group is now run by his sons, Tony and Paul, and posts annual turnover in excess of £30m and employs over 270 people locally.

During the summer, solar PV professionals Mypower installed 2,439 solar panels using the solar mounting systems from Cheltenham-based Sunfixings.

The onsite electrical upgrade required to integrate the solar PV system into the building was carried out by Gloucester-based JEC Electrical using a bespoke switchgear supplied by Cheltenham-based Sub-Distribution.

In September, the Markey Group generated 75,797 kiloWatt hours (kWh) of green electricity from the system, with an annual forecast to generate over 850,000 kWh.

The business, which consists of several specialist subsidiary companies operating in the fields of property management and development, construction, manufacturing and healthcare, said the solar PV system has caused a dramatic and immediate reduction in it's carbon footprint.

Paul Markey, group managing director said: "Producing our own clean green electricity has provided us with a huge leap forward in our bid to reduce our impact on the environment."

The system is said to be providing more electricity than is required by the building, and the machinery used by Markey Group's on-site kitchen manufacturing business, Premiere Kitchens. As a result, kitchens are now leaving the Premiere factory having been largely constructed using renewable electricity."

Andy Barham, managing director of Premiere Kitchens added: "The ability to produce our kitchens using renewable energy helps us on our journey to achieving carbon neutrality in the near future and ultimately Net-Zero."

Annually, the system is expected to generate more than 850,000 kWh of green electricity, more than the UK average annual usage of 290 homes.

Two-thirds of the electricity generated by the system will be used on-site helping the Markey Group avoid over 178 Tonnes of CO2e emissions annually. The remaining third will be sold to Wiltshire-based, Good Energy, a decentralised renewable energy specialist and retailer.

Over the course of a year, it is hoped the green energy system will provide more than a third of the total electricity requirement of the group, helping to partially shield the business from the recent increases in energy costs, or at least until the end of the Government's Energy Bill Relief Scheme.

The newly commissioned system comes in a long line of sustainability initiatives employed by the group and its businesses over the last decade, including zero waste to landfill, a biomass boiler and the installation of electric vehicle chargepoints to help the switch to electric vehicles.

"In the next couple of weeks we will have a new smart air extraction system in the factory with the potential to reduce our daily electricity requirement by a fifth," added Mr Barham.