Sir Ben Ainslie chooses solar to power America’s Cup bid

Sir Ben Ainslie, the four time Olympic gold medallist, is looking to bring sailing's America's Cup to the UK and will power his teams Portsmouth HQ with renewable energy.

The site at Camber Docks is currently under construction and is due to be completed by May 2015 when it will be the home of the Ben Ainslie Racing (BAR) team.

Renewables investor Low Carbon announced today that high-efficiency solar photovoltaic panels installed on the building and boat stacks will supply 90 per cent of the site's electricity, rising to 100 per cent when energy monitoring systems have been installed.

Ainslie said: "This new partnership takes us a long way towards our goal of sustainable, clean energy for our new base.”

The multiple Olympic champion and winner of the 34th America's Cup founded the team last year with the aim of bringing the event back home to where it started in 1851.

Ainslie is aiming for the new team to be the first British squad to win the prestigious trophy.

The new HQ is seen by the team and the developers as an opportunity to showcase the sport and as well as innovative sustainable building design and the building will be rated BREEAM 'Excellent' status, according to Low Carbon.

Low Carbon has developed over 270MW of solar capacity in less than four years and has an international portfolio of approximately 2GW in the pipeline, according to the company.

Roy Bedlow, Low Carbon's founder and chief executive, in a statement: "This project has exciting implications for renewable energy. Because the BAR philosophy is about educating and engaging locally, the project will be a fantastic showcase for how large buildings can be almost entirely sustainable."

Sir Ben has predicted it could generate around 1,000 jobs and pump more than £40m into the local economy.