Dan Fernbank named Public Sector Energy Manager of the Year 2019
Friday, 06 December 2019
We are delighted to announce that Dan Fernbank, Energy & Sustainability Manager, has been named Public Sector Energy Manager of the Year at the Energy Management Awards 2019.
The annual awards, hosted by the Energy Managers Association (EMA), aim to recognise and celebrate outstanding work in the energy management and sustainability industry.
Dan has led the University's Sustainability Services team since 2011 and has been the driving force of many key sustainability developments, such as meeting our ambition of delivering a 35% emissions cut in 2016. Under Dan's leadership we have made even greater progress in reducing our carbon footprint, having recently met a further target of 40%. We are currently making good progress towards our next target of achieving a 45% reduction by 2021.
The EMA judges recognised these reductions as some of the "largest in the higher education sector". They also complimented the practices and tools that have been developed to ensure energy saving initiatives are prioritised across the University's estate, and anticipate likely future changes in energy demand.
As well as our work on reducing carbon, Dan has also overseen work on maintaining our international ISO50001 energy management standard, which we have held since 2015. An audit will soon take place to transfer to the updated 2018 version of the standard.
Alongside his duties as Energy & Sustainability Manager, Dan also volunteers as a Director for Reading Community Energy Society and formerly represented the University as Chair of Reading Climate Change Partnership.
On winning the award, Dan said:
"I'm incredibly pleased and humbled to be named Public Sector Energy Manager of the Year. I'm immensely proud of our Sustainability Services team and want to take this opportunity to highlight the incredible work the team deliver every day at Reading. Our targets may be ambitious, but the progress we have made over the years proves that we really can bring change to the University."
For more information on our sustainability programme , please visit reading.ac.uk/sustainability.