EAUC Energy Seminar - navigating barriers to energy cost control and storage

1st February 2016

On 28 January, the EAUC with support from Clean Power Solutions held an energy seminar at the Chimneys Hotel and Conference Centre, Cheshire. This seminar looked to explore and share solutions and expertise from other institutions in areas, such as energy cost control and storage, key energy technologies and carbon management planning.

There was a short welcome and introduction from Wayne Talbot, EAUC, and our hosts Marc Stanton, Clean Power Solutions. Chair of Collectively's editorial board Martin Wright opened with a keynote speech showing key highlights from some of Collectively's #go100percent clean energy campaign. He spoke in great length and offered his insights from COP21. Grant Anderson, Environmental Manager at Nottingham Trent University delivered a really fascinating talk entitled “The Dark Art - Setting Carbon Targets”. Grant concisely summarised Nottingham Trent’s carbon management campaign called Carbon Elephant and even alluded to their new carbon neutral building, Pavilion. This presentation was followed by Joel Cardinal, Head of Energy & Sustainability at the University of Warwick who looked in depth at CHP, district heating and thermal storage.

After the short interval, Scott Brooks (Nottingham Trent University) went through the stages and processes required to get a CHP project efficiently, through the use of Salix’s Revolving Green Fund. University of Liverpool's Peter Birch showed connections between all things energy related on campus from district heating, to their energy centres and CHP engine cells. In the session “Greening our fleet” Katie Stead, Sustainability and Energy Strategy Manager at Sheffield Hallam University offered an overview and key learning points from their hydrogen vehicle trial.

Throughout lunch and before the remaining presentations, delegates were invited to take the short trip to tour Clean Power Solutions energy facility. In the final three presentations Alistair Roberts from iPower Energy, Lars Weber (Neas Energy) and Simon Durrant, CEO of eSight Energy Group offered their solutions to energy monitoring and management. To reflect on the day, delegates were asked to provide their thoughts on barriers to COP21 and solutions for the future. Some of the issues faced at institutions included the continual expansion of their estates. This could be put increased pressure on their ability to cut carbon emissions whilst at the same time continuing to grow. Other issues included limited legal requirements and senior level leadership across the sector. Solutions were identified including looking at longer term thinking and incentivisation.

To find out more about what happened during the energy seminar and to download the presentations, please follow this link here.

This is a blog post written by Seth Kirby, Membership Engagement Officer, EAUC.