BRAZIL'S first World Cup solar-powered football stadium has been officially opened, in what looks set to be the greenest World Cup ever.
The Mineirão Stadium, originally built in 1965, in Belo Horizonte, a city in the south-east of the country, has been fitted with a 1.4MW solar array on its rooftop.
The worldwide football competition will be hosted in South America next year and many of the sites will have solar PV panels.
A spokesperson from www.theecoexperts.co.uk said: “It’s obviously fantastic that Brazil will be utilising the sun’s rays to power the FIFA World Cup. The whole world will be watching and seeing how effective solar power is and they are setting a great example.
“It is a great green message that an event as big as the World Cup can (at least partially) be powered by renewable energy.”
The project cost £10.7 million and will feed energy back into the grid rather than directly powering the stadium.
Organisers had initially hoped to install solar arrays in all 12 of the 2014 World Cup venues, but with just over a year until the tournament starts, that target appears to have been lowered.
The stadia will not just be used for the World Cup, but also for the 2016 Olympics which Brazil are also hosting.
Another two of the solar stadia are almost complete, one in capital city Brasilia, another in Rio De Janeiro and in the coming months more of the solar-powered stadiums will be opened as Brazil attempts to hold the most sustainable World Cup to date.
