The London Underground uses an absolutely humungous amount of electricity. Ferrying Londoners across the city 24/7 almost every day of the year requires roughly 1.6 terawatt hours (TWh) per year – roughly the same amount used to annually power around 592,600 homes. Unsurprisingly, TfL is the single largest electricity consumer in the city.
Right now, the tube relies on fossil fuels to generate all of its power, but that’s set to change. TfL has big ambitions to be 100 percent reliant on renewable energy sources by 2030. And in some very good news for the planet, the tube will soon be partly powered by the sun.
The solar installations to power the network will be provided by SSE Energy Solutions. It’ll harvest the energy from newly-installed solar farms and supply it directly to the TfL network, bypassing the National Grid.
Photograph: TfL
Once the solar farm is constructed, it’s hoped that the installations will deliver up to 65,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of renewable energy – around two-thirds of the estimated annual consumption of the Victoria line. Over the next 25 years, TfL says there’s potential to save 27,000 tonnes of carbon. That’s equivalent to almost 32,900 flights between London and New York City.
As part of its mission to be carbon-free, TfL is also converting lighting within its stations, bus shelters and on trains to LEDs, reducing carbon in major construction projects and working towards a fully zero-emission bus fleet (it already has the largest collection of zero-emission buses in western Europe).
Did you see that TfL has revealed when you’ll be able to ride new DLR trains in London?
Plus: Everything you need to know about the upcoming Tube strikes.
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