Richard Vargas, chief executive of United Solar Group on the rooftop of 9 Flinders Lane where the business plans to install solar panels.United Solar Group, an Australian renewable energy developer, will start installing solar panels on Melbourne’s empty CBD rooftops this month and plans to expand across the equivalent of 300 hectares of empty commercial rooftops across the country.
“Seventy-five per cent of businesses don’t own the building that they actually trade from. So, there you have a major problem and the landlord obviously wants something out of it.” But current office rooftops are “very much underutilised”, Peter Newman, professor of sustainability at Curtin University, said.“Households have done it, businesses haven’t,” he said. “It’s the next big frontier and it’s a business opportunity. It’s certainly the cheapest form of power and it will enable large-scale systems of solar energy, not just individual houses.”
Alan Pears, senior industry fellow at RMIT, said installing solar panels on city rooftops isn’t as simple as it seems.