New Technical Toolkits for Saving Energy

25th March 2009

In summer 2008 NUS services, the commercial arm of the NUS, secured funding for two new carbon projects: the Supplier Equipment Project and the Ventilation Project.

Over the 2008/09 academic year NUS Services worked with over 30 pilot Students' Unions through these projects to identify how money and carbon can be saved through simple actions.

Supplier equipment

The Supplier Equipment Project focused on reducing the energy used by equipment such as vending machines, games machines and bottle fridges. The project calculated that the average Union has 30 pieces of free supplier equipment using £9,200 of electricity per year and totalling 44 tonnes of CO2.

It identified that collectively this adds up to £2m of energy consumption for NUS Services’ 230 member unions!

Importantly, the project discovered that it is very easy to save considerable amounts of energy through a few simple actions. These actions have been written up in a simple toolkit that is relevant to energy management in leisure spaces the world over.

Click here to download the toolkit.

Ventilation in bars and nightclubs

The Ventilation Project focused on ventilation in bars and nightclubs in the wake of the smoking ban. It found that by improving the management of ventilation, it should be possible to deliver a 30% saving on energy consumption per venue which is worth around £2,200 per year.

Click here to download the Ventilation Project toolkit.

If you save energy…

If you take action to save energy as a result of these toolkits please do complete the Excel tracker with your actions and email it back so NUS Services can track how successful the project has been.