Sustainable roofing options: Everything you need to know

Canopies are typically installed with the British weather in mind. They’re a fantastic way of enhancing facilities, by making them usable in all weathers. But that’s just one benefit they bring.

Increasingly, another key plus is their ability to boost your sustainability credentials. How? Well, we offer canopy solutions with green roofs or covered with solar panels, with both bringing significant environmental and practical benefits.

Solar roofs

Our solar panel roof solutions – launched this year – offer a great way of demonstrating your sustainability commitment whilst significantly cutting your energy costs and are more effective than you might think they are, even on cloudy days:

• You don’t need sun for them to generate power. If it’s light enough to see, it’s light enough to generate a small amount of power so your panels will work hard for you most of the time.
• The power they generate can be surprising. We installed solar panels on the roof of our Head Office a few years ago and they now generate a third (32%) of our electricity – far more than we’d ever anticipated.

They’re also a perfect solution for car park and bike shelters in office and school grounds, garden centres and retail parks:

• They can be simply and unobtrusively incorporated into any all-weather canopy sheltering bikes or cars or covering walkways from car parks.
• They’re particularly well suited to canopies sheltering new EV charging infrastructure as they offer a double sustainability win.

Green roofs

Our green roof systems also tick a huge sustainability box!

• They capture carbon: Just one square metre of green roof is able to capture 5kg of CO2 annually.
• They help meet planning requirements: As of April 2024, any development must now deliver a Biodiversity Net Gain of 10% – meaning that any development should result in a better quality habitat. Green roofs are a simple and effective way of meeting this – offering rich environments for insects and wildlife.
• They are attractive: Green roofs offer an attractive solution for expanding your space particularly on very built-up sites, as they introduce greenery and nature – breaking up grey, urban structures.

We’ve installed green roofs for everyone from universities to visitor attractions and coffee shops and solar panels for offices and retail parks. If you’d be interested in finding out more about our sustainable roofing solutions and how they could work for you, why not get in touch? We’d love to chat through your options with you, or we can offer you a complementary site visit to scope out potential solutions.

So, what are you waiting for? Start the process of upgrading your sustainability credentials today!

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