The carbon-cutter's guide 1: public sector: from April 2010, UK organisations using large amounts of electricity will need to comply with the carbon reduction commitment. In the first of a series of case studies considering how employers in different sectors could respond, we explore the options open to a typical local authority.
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The organisation
The local authority, Typical Council, operates a mixed estate including office buildings, halls, libraries, leisure centres, schools, street lighting, depots for street works and community housing. With several thousand sites, keeping track of them all isn't easy.
Typical Council currently spends about 2m [pounds sterling] a year on electricity and gas. It comfortably exceeds the carbon reduction commitment (CRC) qualification threshold of 6,000MWh of half-hourly metered electricity. It runs tenders regularly to get best value for money, though the admin work this entails is significant.
The authority has made significant progress towards its climate-change objectives. It has purchased all its electricity on a renewable energy supply contract to ensure that it meets its target for purchasing renewables under the Sustainable Operations on the Government Estate (SOGE) initiative.
In the past few years, on-site energy audits have identified potential energy savings of nearly 20 per cent in the main office buildings. But implementation has lagged because of a lack of funding. As a result, the buildings' Display Energy Certificates--which public buildings need in order to show how efficiently they are run and which provide ratings on a scale of A (most efficient) to G (least efficient)--have an average rating of F, well below the national average of D.
The council is currently finding it even harder to access funding because it lost deposits in the Icelandic banking collapse and it has had to freeze all recruitment activity following the announcement of central government funding cuts.
The challenges
Typical Council has to ensure that it's ready to comply with the CRC as well as other existing local authority schemes. The coming months may put extra strain on this area of activity. Significant public-sector spending cuts are likely over the next few years, placing additional pressure on staffing and budgets for investment in new initiatives.
One of the biggest challenges Typical Council faces is to ensure that its schools provide the necessary information on energy use. Without this, it will be unable to meet the CRC requirements. Although the schools contribute to the authority's total emissions, many of them don't appreciate that they will have to give it information on their energy consumption. Ensuring that head teachers regularly provide energy information is high on the council's list of priorities.
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