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Energy, environment & sustainabilityThe University is a major user of energy and water with an annual spend in 08/09 of just under £5m. Of this, £3m was for electricity, £1.7m for gas and £0.8m for water and sewerage. This is a major part of the University's expenditure and we have a clear duty to try and control this for financial reasons. The University also takes its environmental responsibilities seriously. Our carbon footprint due to energy use is about 24000 tonnes of CO2, a highly significant amount. We also therefore have a responsibility to reduce our environmental impact and our contribution to climate change. We have some challenging targets as a University and have recently produced a five year strategy to achieve these. This can be seen in the new Carbon Management Plan.
We have already achieved £0.5m of annual savings from our electricity
consumption compared to 4 years ago with 1,360 tCO 2 saved annually. Allowing
for new buildings commissioned during this period, the actual reduction
is around 15% or 2,185 tonnes CO 2 saved. We have had a commitment to
build BREEAM ‘Excellent' buildings for a number of years, and have 3 buildings
We are accredited under the Carbon Trust Standard, which demonstrates our energy and carbon management is to high standards. We have an extensive metering network with about 1000 of our own utility meters throughout the Estate, of which the majority are on our new automated monitoring system. In 2003, we were the very first University to go through the Carbon Trust Higher Education Carbon Management Scheme. A key part of the University's approach to reducing its environmental and energy impact is the Sustainability and Low Carbon Advisory Group. The terms of reference for this group and the minutes of previous meetings can be viewed by following this link. In February 2005, this Committee set the following target: 'To reduce CO2 emissions from the University's gas combustion and electricity usage by 12.5% from a 2003/04 baseline of 0.11 tonnes/m2 by 2010' This target was achieved and has been superceded by the extremely challenging targets in the new Carbon Management Plan; it was meet by achieving changes in staff/student behaviour through activities such as Our Big Energy Challenge, the Student Switch Off campaign, and Green Impact, by changing our policies and management practices, and by making improvements to our infrastructure. A key part of this latter element is the introduction of new buildings, and the refurbishment of existing buildings, with a performance that reflects best practice. For more information on this and our current approach to sustainable construction see this summary, and the news articles about 4 West and Woodland Court and East Building. If you would like to know more about some of the related research currently being undertaken within the University of Bath, please follow this link. If this website does not answer some of the questions you have, please
contact one of the energy team shown below: The Energy & Environment Team
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