Utilita Bowl want other venues to challenge their 'greenest' cricket ground ambition

By Alex Smith, ECB Reporters Network

Utilita Bowl has laid down the challenge to cricket clubs around the world to fight their claim as the ‘greenest’ cricket ground.

Hampshire’s home ground is in the process of getting a facelift, with 1,044 solar panels being installed on various roofs at the venue, in an industry-leading sustainability initiative.

“Everyone is claiming that they're the most sustainable ground, and that's great that everyone's got that on the top of their list and is really focused on it,” Utilita Bowl CEO David Mann said.

“I don't think anyone's doing anything quite on this scale (in terms of solar panels). There are no other stadiums, as far as we're aware in the UK, that have got the number of solar panels that we will have when we finish setting them up in August.

“I think we can legitimately say that we're doing things that put us a little bit above others at the moment. It would be great if others follow, and we inspire other people to do similar things.”

Cricket is particularly susceptible to climate change and last November the England and Wales Cricket Board announced it Environmental Sustainability Plan for Cricket.

The plan focuses on the importance of all of the cricket network and its suppliers and partners working together, with support from the ECB, to make the game more sustainable.

As part of the plan the ECB signed up to the commitments of the UN Sport for Climate Action Framework, of which Surrey Gloucestershire and the Melbourne Cricket Ground are also signatories, which provides science-based targets for all of society.

Last year we also saw Edgbaston hold the first sustainable international cricket game of its kind the ‘Go Green Game’ between England Men and New Zealand, when a report found more than a third less carbon was emitted from a comparable match in 2022.

The Kia Oval and MCC at Lord’s have long established and innovative sustainability initiatives while the ECB has funded more than £10million so that pro and grassroots clubs can undertake their sustainable journey.

There is no doubt, however, that much more still needs to be done and Mann said since the Utilita Bowl’s announcement last month that other venues have been in contact.

“As soon as we announced this, the phone started ringing to us and to Utilita too about how they could get involved and do similar things at their venues,” he said.

“We may not be ahead for long, but we'll keep going again and looking at what else we can do, what more we can do incrementally to be able to save, to be able to have that aspiration and be able to do concrete things to deliver it.

“We've been thinking about it for a while, but we didn't really realise the scale of the opportunity either. We've never had the resource to do it, so it's only really when we got into the partnership with Utilita where they've actually enabled us to do that.

“This is over a thousand panels in the initial phase. We're talking to them as well about how we could do more. It seems quite exciting the options that we may or may not have.”

The panels are set to generate almost 400,000kwh per year – 25 per cent of the electricity used at the stadium each year. It will also save the ground 80 tonnes of carbon each year – the equivalent of an average car driving 300,000 miles.

Utilita CEO Bill Bullen added: “Hampshire have shown some leadership in this area.”

Perhaps just as important in the current cost of living climate is the amount of money Hampshire will be able to save.

The club currently spends over £1million a year on utilities across the vast site, but have already slashed 20 per cent off the on-site Hilton hotel’s electricity consumption by being smarter, with the panels saving a six-figure sum in total.

“It's massively important for us to address our utilities consumption and how we can reduce those costs,” explained Mann.

“Because every pound we spend on that is a pound we can't spend on something else. They say the cheapest unit of energy is the one you don’t use, and we have really focused on that mantra.”

Hampshire-based Utilita have already installed panels at Portsmouth Football Club’s training ground, and on the back of the Utilita Bowl announcement, have plenty of similar plans in the pipeline.

They have become a recognisable brand thanks to numerous sporting partnerships – which include variety of football, rugby union, rugby league and cricket sides around the country.

Although the details of this initiative prove Utilita aren’t just a name on the stadium for the ‘Bowl’– with the panels potentially outlasting their involvement in the club.

Utilita’s Bullen said: “The panels that are going in are going to last at least 20 years so that's long-term. I hope the partnerships last a long time as well, but if for whatever reason it doesn’t we would have left a legacy for the ground.

“I think this is the biggest installation of solar in sports, so I think it's a big deal, and it is certainly our biggest installation so far.

“We're really keen to kind of use this project here at Hampshire to really make a big statement in terms of our ambitions of delivering solar, not just in sporting venues but also across residential space as well.”

The solar panels are just the first centre-piece of a number of sustainable initiatives Hampshire have in the works.

The free park-and-ride scheme, that has been running since 2022, will ferry over 25,000 people to Hampshire, Southern Brave and England matches this summer.

Electric vehicle charging points are being installed in the car parks and from next year the water bill will disappear thanks to reusing the water from irrigation on the golf course – and imminently the cricket square.

“Everyone can say they've got a net zero aspiration when they actually go and buy a few carbon offsets or whatever,” said Mann.

“In terms of offsetting, we've got a huge program of tree planting on our site. We're very lucky that we've got 180, 190 acres of site, so we can do things on that.

“For example, we put about 400 trees in this spring. This autumn and next spring, and probably for the subsequent couple of years as well, we'll be putting thousands of trees in our own offsets.

“It's all part of a big project that's going to have a lot of smallish things going to add up to quite a bit of impact.”