HEFCE 'SALIX' Revolving Green Fund

The University has recently been awarded £250,000 under a HEFCE 'Revolving Green Fund' set up to encourage investment in projects to reduce our carbon footprint. We had to go through a rigorous selection procedure and succeeded with our bid for £200,000 which the University has matched with a £50,000 top-up. A further forty-three other HEIs were also awarded a share of £25 million from the Revolving Green Fund, a partnership fund between HEFCE and Salix Finance.

The money from the 'Revolving Green Fund' enables HE establishments to radically transform their approach to energy consumption and reduce emissions by investing in energy efficiency projects. These projects should generally produce a better-than 5 year payback in terms of energy savings. The University has several projects in mind which with some investment will achieve the required pay-back.

The original £250,000 grant then works as a 'revolving' fund in that the initial loan is continually being repaid from the savings from the projects and, as long as we continue to re-invest in further projects, we never have to actually pay it back. This allows on-going investment for the foreseeable future until we run out of things to do (probably never!).

We received our first £50,000 payment recently and will be spending the initial money on lighting upgrades in corridors (new efficient fittings plus automated controls), insulation on pipework in plant rooms, draughtproofing windows, boiler controls etc, all of which are 1-3 year paybacks. This funding enhances the existing work which has seen significant investment in monitoring equipment and other improvement projects as well as the 'Our Big Energy Challenge' awareness-raising project. These improvements have resulted in £500,000 being saved annually from the utility bills for the University.

Updates on the investments made and the consequent savings will be made available through the Energy pages on a regular basis.

To read the full HEFCE article, follow this link £25 million awarded to transform approaches to energy consumption

If you have any questions or enquiries, or suggestions for energy saving projects in your area, please contact Peter Phelps, Energy and Environment Manager, within the Department of Estates, or email to the Estates Helpdesk.