Three energy projects you should know about

Public sector building managers and local authorities face a mammoth task of reaching net zero by 2045. From swimming pools to libraries, every building uses energy that is so often wasted. Robyn Quick has a look at some innovative energy projects.

There are so many projects seeking to reduce carbon emissions across the UK in a variety of creative yet effective ways.

We have picked out some of our favourites which highlight the positive steps various industries are taking.

The first self-powered hospital

Castle Hill Hospital in East Yorkshire may not sound like anything special at first, but it holds an impressive title in the world of sustainability.

It has almost 400 beds and provides cardiac and elective surgical facilities, medical research teaching, day surgery facilities, a breast surgery facility, and outpatients department, as well as the regional centre for oncology and haematology.

Before the project was completed, the Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust’s head of sustainability, Marc Beaumont, said: “When you consider the size of the Castle Hill Hospital site and the amount of activity that goes on here, that’s a huge amount of power that’s required to keep it running.”

This is true for the majority of healthcare centres, but Castle Hill decided their solution was to install solar panels in a nearby field to power the hospital’s entire daytime running needs during the summer months.

At the end of 2020, they received a Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme grant from the government.

The 11,000-panel solar farm – funded through a grant of £4.2 million – means that during the summer, the organisation was saving about £250,000 a month in energy bills. The panels will generate more than 4.2 million kilowatt hours every year, approximately the same as powering 1,400 UK households a year.

The Trust has also introduced combined heat and power technology at Castle Hill to capture and use the heat created as a by-product of the electricity generation process.

The network making libraries more sustainable

Libraries are one of the few places left where a person can walk in and not be expected to spend money to access a service. They give everyone the chance to learn without pressure, as well as providing much needed community spaces.

However, keeping a library running is costly to the environment. They are often older buildings without the necessary energy-saving provisions in place, so they use up a lot of light, heat and power.

Luckily, there is a growing network of people who want to make libraries more sustainable.

The Green Libraries Partnership was established in response to the 2021 international climate change conference COP26 and the number of local authorities across England declaring a climate emergency.

Launched by CILIP in spring 2022, with development funding from Arts Council England, the Green Libraries Partnership is a UK-wide, cross-sector programme focused on the contribution of librarians, information and knowledge professionals to the sustainability agenda. The ambition is to encourage libraries to actively reduce their carbon footprint and increase public awareness of environmental issues.

Yvonne Morris, projects and programmes manager at CILIP, said: “As libraries, we occupy a place at the heart of the communities we serve.

“Through our activities and our Green Libraries Manifesto, we want to come together towards a shared vision: to lead by example through our own environmental actions and use our power and reach to inform and inspire people to take positive action and build resilience in the diverse communities we serve.”

The Green Library Partnership works closely with Arts Council England which has identified environmental responsibility as a key investment principle as part of its 10 Year Strategy for 2020-2030, Let’s Create.

Their Grant Fund awarded small grants totalling £40,000 and enabled a range of library projects such as a month-long festival celebrating bees in Barnsley and environmental activities taking over the Blackburn with Darwen Children’s Literature Festival to take place.

Morris told us their first Green Libraries conference, held at the Wellcome Collection in London last March, attracted over 130 delegates, and the Green Libraries Manifesto has gained over 200 signatures from libraries as far as Mexico and India.

The second Green Libraries Conference will be held at the British Library on 25 November.

Outside of the project, some libraries are being given an increase in funding to make them more energy efficient. For example, the British Library has been awarded more than £2.4 million to decarbonise two of the library’s buildings at their storage facility in Boston Spa, Yorkshire.

Air source heat pumps will be installed in both buildings, and solar panels will be fitted on the roof of one of the buildings to produce renewable electricity. High efficiency motors, double glazing and LED lighting will also be installed to improve the overall energy efficiency of both sites.

The councils who see the light on solar panels

According to data from the Microgeneration Certification Scheme, there are about 1.28 million homes with solar installations in the country, which equates to 4.5 per cent of households in the UK.

Installing solar panels in residential settings has a variety of benefits from allowing homeowners to reduce their energy bills, to lowering their carbon footprint.

More and more councils have started to install solar panels in homes for these reasons. Many of them are looking to improve the standard of our council housing and make sure residents live in well-insulated, efficiently heated, healthy homes.

As part of their pledge to do just that, Brighton and Hove City Council said that around 800 council-rented houses and bungalows will benefit from new solar panels they plan to build over the next three years.

They said in November last year that this means tenants could now save up to £250 on their electricity bill and the equivalent of 0.5 tonnes carbon dioxide per year.

Their plan of action will see solar panels installed on the roofs of homes selected for the project and wired directly into the fuse box, giving them free electricity whenever the panels are generating power.

If a household is using more electricity than is generated, power will still come from the national grid and be paid for normally.

Any surplus electricity generated by the panels will be exported to the national grid, helping the drive to lower carbon emissions. The council also said solar panels are being included in the design of new council housing projects.

Outside of housing, solar panels are increasingly being installed to power more public sector buildings.

A swimming pool in Three Rivers will be heated and illuminated using solar energy thanks to a major grant from the government’s Swimming Pool Support Fund.