Tune in, switch off

As well as being home to a world-leading university, Cambridge can lay claim to being the UK’s capital of cycling, and in February a new velocipede arrives in the city. Looking like a cross between a gym bike and a unicycle, it should get staff across the University talking about some very important issues.

The Energy Bike, as it’s known, will tour different parts of the University during Switch Off Week. As well as being a fun break from work, the intention is to show people how hard it is to power their gadgets, and to demonstrate the energy costs associated with everyday tasks.

Taking a ride on the Energy Bike is just one way of getting involved in Switch Off Week. Many of the events will be fun, but the underlying message is serious, says Professor Jeremy Sanders, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Institutional Affairs: “Switch Off Week is a great opportunity for staff and students to understand the environmental and financial impact of their actions, to take responsibility, change their behaviour and see the benefits for their departments.”

Those costs and potential benefits are enormous, he says: “Environment and energy are important from at least two perspectives. The first is purely financial. The University’s electricity bill is more than £10m a year and, if we don’t do anything, it will carry on increasing. Secondly, there’s the whole question of leadership and our impact on the environment. The University has world-class research in energy, from fundamental physics and chemistry to applied engineering. We have a wonderful range of expertise in the research area but the question is how do we apply that expertise in our own buildings?”

The answer lies partly in the University’s Energy and Carbon Reduction Project (ECRP). Launched in 2010 with an annual budget of £2m, the ECRP is working with five pilot departments: Engineering (the largest department in the University and one with major research and teaching interests in energy technology); the University Library; and three large energy users ¬– Plant Sciences, the Gurdon Institute and Chemistry.

The object of the exercise is to find the best behavioural and technological ways of reducing energy use. “That might mean more efficient pumps and more efficient computer cooling, but also everybody being more careful about turning off lights and computers. All those those things contribute,” Professor Sanders explains.

“The five pilots have been chosen for their different patterns of energy use, the idea being to test experimentally ways of reducing energy consumption in those departments. The second part of ECRP's remit is to take those successful approaches and apply them across the operational estate.”

The Gurdon Institute decided to take part because of its high energy consumption. “We use about 5m kWh of electricity a year but only occupy a 7,000 m2 building,” explains its Building Facilities Manager Kathy Hilton. “The Gurdon volunteered because we’re aware that we are an energy intensive building and we also have a biomedical facility. It’s an area that has very close environmental conditions with lots of air turnover, heating and cooling.”

The Gurdon decided to focus on behaviour change for the pilot, holding a three-day exhibition in their tea room and asking staff to sign a pledge to be more energy aware. Then, between March and September 2012, they ran a competition to see which lab could reduce its energy use most each month.

The results impressed Hilton, somewhat sceptical at the outset. “You see places lit up like Christmas trees and wonder what the point is of saving a couple of kilowatts on your computer. But we’ve shown that little savings from everyone make a significant difference.”

The winning lab was Professor Andrea Brand’s. “They took it really seriously and transformed their whole culture,” says Hilton. “The reductions persisted after the competition ended. Looking at the year-to-date, 80 per cent of the labs had managed to reduce their energy consumption, and the Brand lab by an impressive 60 per cent overall.”

For its part of the ECRP, the Engineering Department has focused on how existing building services – heating, lighting and ventilation – are provided, centralising and updating key services. “One example is our computer rooms,” says David Green, Superintendent of the Engineering Workshops. “We’ve moved from having several small computer rooms with two or three racks of servers to two much larger facilities, and then we’ve made them as efficient as possible. We’re particularly proud of the work we’ve done to improve the energy efficiency of the cooling in the server rooms.”

Using evaporative cooling (or fresh air) Engineering is saving £75,000 a year on its electricity bills, as well as hundreds of tonnes of carbon, and payback time on the investment is just five years. The improvements make a major difference to the department’s performance under the Energy Incentivisation Scheme. “At the end of 2008/09 when the scheme came in we got a bill for £35,000 because we’d exceeded our target. Our computer room has reversed that in one hit,” he explains.

At the time, it made Engineering’s data centre one of the most efficient in higher education and beyond – lessons Green has shared with other departments, student groups and other universities. “We were proud of it, we wanted to fly the flag, but we also wanted to share the knowledge of what we’ve learned and achieved. It's been a good academic exercise,” he explains.

But saving money is only one reason for saving energy, he believes. Leading by example and putting engineering research into practice are important too. “We’re putting photovoltaics onto one of our roofs, which will put energy back into the grid using technologies developed in this department. We’re particularly proud of that.”

Rather than installing commercially available photovoltaic units, Engineering is fitting panels that incorporate a microinverter and thin-film technology developed at Cambridge. “That means we can compare and contrast, push the boundaries a bit, which is what we’re here for,” Green adds.

Departments exist to teach, as well as do research, and Engineering’s energy roof has formed part of fourth-year and PhD student projects. Involving students in sustainability is vital says University Environmental Officer Joanna Simpson: “Cambridge graduates are going to go on to become future business leaders and politicians, and could have a huge positive or negative impact on sustainability, depending on their viewpoint, when they leave university.”

As well student societies with a green focus (see box), staff and students can get involved with the Green Impact scheme. “This is the first year Cambridge has been involved. It’s a staff and student engagement programme that supports them to undertake simple actions in offices and departments. It’s structured through an online workbook and at the end of the year teams are recognised with either a bronze, silver or gold award,” Simpson explains.

Staff can get more involved by volunteering as a departmental Energy Champion or Environmental Co-ordinator. For the past two and a half years, Web Services Manager Sarah Cater has been Environmental Coordinator at the Cambridge Judge Business School, where she’s examining how to save paper by making more material available online.

Over coming months she will be documenting paper consumption and time staff spend on producing printouts, and asking users for their views. “Our Executive MBA programme is a great example. Delegates are mostly from overseas and the programme is 100 per cent paperless, so it’s a great example of how it can work,” says Cater.

Colleges also want to share best practice, says Carole Birtwhistle, CRC Coordinator for the Cambridge Colleges. “The National Trust has developed an energy map for its properties showing the kind of technologies they have at different sites, and I’d like to introduce something similar for the colleges.” Prime candidates for inclusion will be Jesus College’s new ground source heat pump, photovoltaic installations at Downing and Homerton colleges, Churchill’s Combined Heat and Power plant, and Magdalene’s new staircase sub-metering.

There’s a great deal going on, but a great deal more needs to be done, says Simpson: “The target in our Carbon Management Plan is to reduce our carbon emissions by 34 per cent by 2020 from a 2005 baseline. It’s a big challenge.”