Nottingham City Council is looking to the heavens to power a number of its leisure centres, by installing solar panel canopies above the facility's car parks.

The Ken Martin Leisure Centre, Harvey Hadden Leisure Centre and Nottingham Tennis Centre will all be topped with solar panels, with each site expected to be fully-powered by the new canopies.

The plans are part of a wider city scheme to boost green energy generation across the city, with two football pitch-sized canopies in the pipeline at nearby at park-and-ride sites.

The solar project is expected to cost the council £2m, with the money to be recouped in a decade if the canopies generate £200,000 worth of energy a year as predicted.

A contractor is expected to be appointed in the next few weeks to design the structures, with the first canopy hoped to be in place by November.

A Nottingham City Council spokesman said all of the leisure centres' solar panels combined would generate almost a megawatt of power, adding: “Our ambitious plans to generate enough energy from solar canopies above car parks are continuing. Collectively, the proposals will create one of the largest urban solar canopies in the UK, generating significant income and energy savings for the City Council.”

The initiative marks a growing trend of leisure centres seeking to minimise their carbon footprint. Tiddenfoot Leisure Centre in Bedfordshire recently became the first local authority site to install Technogym’s eco-friendly line of Artis equipment that harnesses human energy and feeds it directly into the facility’s power grid system.