Decade of St Andrews University finance and energy efficiency initiatives set to save £12.3m

Scotland’s first university is celebrating ten years of energy-saving initiatives; which have drastically reduced its carbon emissions and energy bills by millions of pounds.

Over the last decade, the University of St Andrews has implemented more than 150 individual energy reduction projects across its estate, expected to reduce the university’s carbon output by around 5,300 tonnes* and to save an estimated £960,000 annually in energy bills.

The energy improvements, which were made possible with the help of an interest free loan from independent, government-funded organisation, Salix Finance, as part of its Revolving Green Fund, will help the University to achieve its plans to become the UK’s first carbon neutral university for energy use in buildings.

The recycling fund, along with funding from the University itself, has enabled the university to invest nearly £4 million into energy efficient technologies, including over 50 insulation installations, lighting upgrades, 27 boiler improvements and 10 building management systems (BMS), as well as motor controls and combined heat and power plant installations.

The University has also utilised £280,000 of Salix funding toward energy efficiency projects within their award winning data centre, for free cooling, virtualisation and a high efficiency uninterruptable power supply.

The University of St Andrews was the first public sector organisation to achieve the CEEDA (Certified Energy Efficient Data Centre Award) Gold Award for its Butts Wynd Data Centre by the British Computing Society (BCS) in 2012. An organisation has to undergo an audit every two years to stay accredited to the standard. The University has successfully retained the CEEDA Gold Award for energy efficiency across all areas of its Data Centre and remains the only public sector organisation in the world to hold the Gold standard.

More recently, the university has been using the fund to install LED lighting across several buildings. As well as significant financial and carbon savings, the lighting, heating and energy management technologies will have greater lifespans than the previous systems and will lead to an improvement in the learning environments for both staff and students.

In total, the upgrades are expected to generate approximately £12.3m worth of savings over the lifetime of the initiatives – the largest saving of any Salix recycling fund in Scotland and the second largest across the United Kingdom.

David Stutchfield, sustainability manager at the University, said: “The University is committed to optimising its energy efficiency and reducing the amount of energy that it uses. Over the past ten years, we have installed a range of energy efficiency measures in order to achieve this goal, and have seen great energy reductions from such measures, which have notably improved comfort levels and the university’s appeal to both current and prospective students and staff.

“We have hugely appreciated the support from Salix. The fund has been transformational and without it, these robust energy saving projects would not have gone ahead. Not only has the funding been vital but the providers have also been a source of clear and useful guidance and we would recommend them to any organisations with limited budgets looking to invest in large scale energy efficiency work.”

The Salix recycling fund aims to increase investment in energy efficient technologies across the public sector by providing capital which is then matched by the public sector organisation. Any financial savings achieved by the initiatives are then returned back in to the fund to be used for further energy saving projects. In addition, Salix are currently supporting public sector organisations in Scotland with the opportunity to open new recycling funds.