Tell us about the Energy Action Group (EAG)...

The Energy Action Group is a great example of collaboration at Warwick. It embodies some of the key frames from our Way to Sustainable strategy, including 'Leading by example', 'Guided by insight' and 'Powered by the economy'.

Building on many years of sector-leading work in energy infrastructure, the group was set up in 2022 as a collective effort to tackle both our net zero ambitions and energy security. It brings together people from across the University to develop long-term solutions, both from an operational and infrastructure perspective.

We have academics working alongside heating system engineers, finance colleagues and specialists in carbon accounting. This means we have the right people in the room to make decisions quickly and get on with the job of moving our campus away from fossil fuels and towards clean, sustainable energy systems.

What kinds of projects has the EAG been working on over the past year?

A big achievement from the past 12 months is that we have saved 1,000 tonnes of CO₂ by switching off heating when it's not needed and adjusting the temperatures in corridors and other less-used spaces. This means that we can keep offices and teaching spaces warm whilst avoiding waste elsewhere and during evenings and weekends.

This winter, we are making changes to our district heating system to use less gas for heating, saving an estimated 2,500 tonnes of CO₂. While all of our purchased electricity already comes from renewable sources, we’re keen to generate as much as we can on-site. We’ve installed a huge number of new solar panels on roofs around campus – these will all be connected and ready to use shortly, significantly expanding our capacity to generate our own green electricity. Look out for more information on this soon.

Another project that has been supported by the EAG is enhanced temperature monitoring in WBS. We are gathering more data than ever before on temperature and how spaces are used, which is allowing our operational teams and researchers to identify energy saving opportunities and manage the campus energy system in a smarter manner. This project will ensure that heat is being delivered to the places that need it such as the spaces we work and study in, and aims to tackle the imbalance of temperatures across the buildings. We intend to roll out increased monitoring in the near future in a variety of building types to continue this endeavour.

The EAG is investigating ground source heat pumps, which very few other universities are currently using. Warwick is leading the way! Tell us about this.

We are really excited about this project! Over the next few months we will be investigating opportunities to use ground source heat pumps on campus. These use boreholes to access energy from the ground to heat and cool buildings via a district heating system. In practice the investigations mean digging some narrow but really deep holes, down to about 350 metres. We’ll then undertake some tests on water circulated through these boreholes to see how much energy can be sustainably used to serve our campus.

We’ll be investigating two sites on campus, and the boring itself will take about two weeks. We will share more information on this shortly so you know what to expect, but the work won’t be too disruptive for staff and students. It might sound ‘boring’ but if the testing shows that we are able to use the heat stored in the ground beneath our campus, it will be a real game-changer for reducing our carbon emissions.

We’re doing a lot to play our part in tackling climate change. What’s next for the University in terms of bettering this even further?

Over the next year we’ll be looking at even more energy saving opportunities and making changes to our campus. We have an exciting project planned for 2024 to decarbonise our Computer Science building, following our strategy of ‘Reduce, Decarbonise and Smart’. We’ll be upgrading insulation and windows, replacing old gas boilers with air source heat pumps and installing smart heating controls. It’s a wonderful example of bringing together all of these principles in a single building.

We’ll also be continuing work to optimise our heating controls across campus, upgrading our systems, using new software and working with our suppliers to make the best use of our heating infrastructure.

The ground source heat pump investigations will help us to plan for a major shift in the way we heat our campus, which will be particularly beneficial for our future infrastructure developments. Eventually, we will get to a point where our whole district heating network is run using clean energy sources.

What are three quick/easy/everyday things every staff member can do to save energy when we’re at work?

• Help us to find energy saving opportunities. We know that we are still heating some areas of campus when nobody is using them, but we don’t know where they all are. If you know a place on campus which is empty after 4pm, tell us and we can change the operating hours for the heating system. You’d be amazed how much energy and carbon we can save by reducing the heating by one hour per day, and we can always switch things back if the hours the space is used for change in future.
• Switch off equipment when it’s not needed. This could be things like light switches and monitors, but also bigger things which use a lot of power. Some equipment, especially in laboratories, can’t be switched off, so if you’re not sure about something let us know and we can check with the right person.
• Tell us if something is broken. Some of our buildings, such as University House, have older systems that are due for replacement, so we may not be able to do much with them right now, but on the whole if we can fix things, we will.