Month: April 2015

Guardian Sustainable business awards 2015

April 30, 2015 /

Last night the Guardian Sustainable Business Awards 2015 took place and King’s PhD student Richard Milburn went along to find out about the event. As the Guardian says ‘ making and keeping a business sustainable is a challenge’. These awards gave the opportunity to highlight some innovative businesses and those that have created a positive impact in becoming more sustainable.

The awards focus on a whole range of businesses; those that had sustainability at their core from the start and those that are now trying to incorporate it into their already function business. The awards consider businesses from a wide range of sections and consider those both large and small.

The awards are meant to showcase people and projects that are helping businesses to become more sustainable and work to improve people, the planet and profits.

This year the winners ranged from the large superstore M&S to the slightly smaller company GENeco, a sustainable solutions company who focus on waste (‘we make waste work’).

Here are a few of the winners from this year:

  • Neal’s Yard remedies won the Innovation award for Supply Change
  • Divine chocolate won the Innovation award for social impact
  • GENeco won the Impact award for waste
  • IKEA won the Impact award for Net Positive
  • M&S won the Impact award for Natural Capital
  • Carbon tracker won the Innovation award for communicating sustainability
  • Wyke farms won overall winner for carbon and energy management
  • Carbon trust won the Innovation award for built environment

If you would like to find out more about all the winners and how you can get involved next year here.

Looking at Display Energy Certificates at King’s

April 27, 2015 /

This week we’ve been talking to Tom Yearley and Bolaji Olaniru, (who look after energy at King’s), about DECs around King’s and how these help monitor the energy performance of our buildings.

Display energy certificates (DEC) were introduced to improve the energy performance of buildings and are used to display the actual energy performance of a building. Since January 2012, all public buildings with total useful area of more than 500m2 are required to display DEC in a place clearly visible to the public. This means that a lot of the buildings across King’s are now required to have a DEC on display.

DEC displays the Operational Rating (OR) of a building ranked from A-G, with “A” being the most efficient and “G” the least. This rating shows the amount of energy consumed by a building, calculated by comparing the value of carbon emissions per unit area with other buildings in the same OR category. Other metrics of a building are considered for the OR rating, including building category, location, unique property reference number, energy consumption, measurement period and total useful floor area. DECs are accompanied by an advisory report (AR) that helps the occupier to identify what may be done to improve the energy efficiency. The DEC is valid for 1 year and the AR is valid for 7 years in buildings over 1000 m2. For smaller buildings (between 500 m2 and 1000 m2) both the DEC and AR are valid for 10 years.

At King’s we currently manage 26 buildings which have DEC certificates. Within these buildings, nine have a rating of C (no As and Bs!) and four buildings are rated as ‘G’. As this shows a lot can be done to improve the energy performance of our building.

Currently within the Sustainability team we are focusing on two main methods to improve of energy efficiency: capital investments and behavioural change. Capital investments can help to make infrastructural change which can have a large positive impact on energy performance. However these projects are quite expensive and will require more labour and time to implement. Behavioural change therefore can have a huge impact on our energy use at King’s – and it’s free! These are the little things we can do as individuals, such as switching off electrical appliances, wearing warmer clothing in winter and using the stairs.

As a team we are working hard to try to improve our energy performance and are currently running a number of behavioural change programmes, including Sustainability Champions. You can make a difference so get involved! Contact us for more details or sign up to our newsletter to stay up-to-date with our future projects.

Meet Phil, our interim Head of Sustainability

April 21, 2015 /

Today we’d like to introduce you to our newest member of the team, Phil, our interim Head of Sustainability. Phil is covering for Kat Thorne whilst she is away on 12 month maternity leave and joined us at the end of March. He has some key objective he will be working hard to achieve within his time here at King’s.

Phil Evans‘I’ve been working in the energy and environmental sector for 20 years, with this being my third stint in Higher Education along with a variety of corporates and consultancies. Over the years I have worked with varies organisations including UEL and Imperial College, London, as well as Green Bridge and EnTech Energy.

My main goal is to ensure Estates & Facilities becomes ISO14001 certified within the short time I’m here, so I’m going to be busy! It’s the obvious next step for us because the ISO14001 environmental management system will allow us to consistently manage our environmental risks and help to demonstrate our commitment to serving a world-class University.

Everyone within the Sustainability Team is playing their part in making this happen, but we won’t be able to do it without your help and support.’

So Phil’s main aim for the year is to help get King’s college ISO14001 Certified. ISO 14001 is the international standard for environmental management and shows that as a University we are committed to meeting and improving environmental standards. This will help us to achieve:

* An effective management system for activities affecting the environment on sites             * Reducing risk to the environment and improved efficiency at King’s                                   * Compliance with statutory and regulatory requirements in relation to the environment

It is also good housekeeping, keeping us in line with Fit for King’s, which in turn can help lower costs within estates and facilities.

Phil will be working closely with Ann in implementing the Environmental Management System in accordance with this which is currently being developed. This is a huge positive step for the University and we are happy to have Phil joining the team!

If you have any ideas or projects that you think will improve the sustainability at King’s please do email them to us. Also sign up to our newsletter to keep up to date with our progress and to find out how you can help us!

Energy Savings over Easter

April 13, 2015 /

We hope you all had a lovely Easter and are all ready for the last term of this year!

Over the Easter break we asked you to try to turn off any unused equipment, shut windows and recycle your waste to help reduce our carbon footprint, as we did over the Christmas holidays.

Thanks to your brilliant efforts we were able to reduce emissions between 2nd April and 7th April by 95 Tonnes of CO2, which equates to around £23,379! Fantastic! 31% of the reduction occurred in our residences, who (hopefully!) were inspired by our Easter shutdown poster.

The recent incident at Strand also of course had an impact on our electricity use during the holidays. The initial impact of this appears to be a saving of 18.8 Tonnes of CO2 (around £4,000), with this saving likely to be higher once gas figures are verified.

These are great results for the Easter shutdown and highlight how you as individuals are making a huge positive impact towards us reaching our 43% carbon reduction target. Thank you for your help and we look forward to seeing the results of the next shutdown!

Here’s something fun if you want to try to reduce your waste when drying your hands! http://youtu.be/2FMBSblpcrc

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