A joint effort between staff and students has helped South Staffordshire College achieve a huge reduction in its energy consumption and cut costs by tens of thousands of pounds.
In the academic year to date, the college has been able to successfully reduce its gas usage by 519,000 kWhs and electricity consumption by nearly 130,000 kWhs.
In everyday terms, it means a kettle could be boiled more than 8.65 million times with the combined kWh saving of gas and electricity seen at the college.
The college has also invested £200,000 with support from an energy reducing grant from the ESFA to switch traditional lighting to LED lighting.
As a result of the combined efforts of staff and students and the investment into energy-saving lighting, the college has successfully reduced its energy bill by £130,000 this academic year to date.
The college has plans to become a carbon neutral organisation so lowering energy consumption is playing an important contribution to the achievement of this goal.
John Snow, Deputy Principal, Finance and Resources, said: “I am proud of what our college community has been able to achieve by working together.
“The small changes both staff and students have made have really delivered big results.
“There is always more we can be doing to take us a step closer towards our carbon neutral ambition, so we’ll be looking at other technology we can invest in to help us achieve this as well as initiatives the wider college can support with.”
The estates team at the college is leading in its ‘green plans’ and has worked hard to educate and encourage both staff and students to switch lights and equipment off when not in use and at the end of each day, which has resulted in significant savings.
In addition to this, the estates team have also done lots of work to review heating schedules and the temperature within the buildings to make sure it’s warm enough for people to learn and work without using excess energy.
This has made a huge difference to gas usage. The estates team have also insulated boiler houses across each of the college sites to help reduce the amount of heat lost making them more energy efficient.
