Launching the carbon countdown campaign

Friday, 14 November 2014

Lightswitch

Friday 28 November sees the launch of a major new Carbon Countdown campaign to save energy across the University - and we need your help!  The launch event will see teams of staff and students volunteers involved in an NUS-backed ‘Blackout' evening; auditing buildings across the Whiteknights campus to see how much energy can be saved by turning off any unnecessary equipment. Following the audits, we'll meet back in ‘Mission Control' to share our findings over a pizza; including some initial estimates of energy savings, which we'll be assessing more fully over the weekend.

We would like as many staff as possible to support this event, which is happening at universities up and down the country over the next few months.  Why not sign up to join a team on the night or commit to ensuring all unnecessary equipment on the Friday night is switched off? More information on how to get involved can be found here.

Seeing how much can be saved over one weekend is just the start of the wider Carbon Countdown campaign; where we're aiming to save energy every evening and weekend.  This will build on our current success of having now cut our carbon emissions by 23% compared to our 2008/09 baseline, saving over an entire year's carbon emissions from the University since 2011! We've also saved £7.4 million for a £2.4 million energy efficiency investment, and are well on our way to reaching our 35% reduction target.

This has been achieved by schemes such as the installation of LED lighting which you may have noticed in the library reading rooms or by better insulation in buildings such as the new roof on HumSS. We have lots more projects to be delivered over the next few years and if you have any suggestions of what you would like to see then please email us.

We're achieving good recognition for our savings to date, with shortlisting for 4 national sustainability awards in 2014.  To push on to 2016, we are now asking everyone to get involved with the Carbon Countdown and work with us to deliver a more sustainable University.