Making DECC low carbon
Since its creation on 3 October 2008, DECC has been engaged in an ambitious and wide-reaching programme to reduce its energy consumption and increase its overall sustainability.
The 10% challenge
On 14 May 2010, the Prime Minister committed central government to reducing its carbon emissions by 10% within 12 months. Cabinet Office and DECC announced today that the Government has achieved this target, saving a total of 13.8%. Never before has central government achieved this level of reduction in such a short space of time.
Building on this success, the Prime Minister announced a new target to reduce emissions by 25% by 2015. This new target will cover a wider scope of the government estate and a wider scope of greenhouse gases (not just CO2), and include business-related transport emissions.
DECC has worked hard to contribute to the achievement of this target, reducing its emissions by more than 21% over the target period. We have achieved this mainly through improved management and control of our building systems and through investment in new or improved plant and equipment, as well as some behaviour change measures. Examples include:
- installation of a dedicated server room chiller that enables us to switch off the cooling to the whole of our HQ building when it is not required
- adjustments to building management systems
- switching to LED lighting
- encouraging staff working over the Christmas period to concentrate on a few floors of our HQ building
Read more information on these projects, and case studies from other departments that have contributed to the 10% carbon emission reduction from the Government estate.
We will not be resting on our laurels however – we have an ambitious plan to reduce our emissions even further.
Carbon management in DECC
DECC has launched its first ever Carbon Management Plan. This ambitious plan aims to cut carbon emissions from DECC’s estate and business travel by 25% by 2014/15 compared to 2009/10. We also aspire to a zero-carbon footprint from our estate by 2050, in line with the challenge for the rest of the UK built environment. The plan was developed with the help of the Carbon Trust as part of the Carbon Trust’s Central Government Carbon Management Service. It covers the period 1 April 2010 to 31 March 2015.
As the department responsible for policy on energy and climate change, DECC must lead by example, pioneering new technologies and measures where possible. The 25% target is extremely challenging as it comes on top of previous success in energy efficiency and carbon management. For example, DECC reduced its carbon emissions from energy by 18.6% in 2009/10 – the baseline year for the plan – compared to 2008/9. Read more below about DECC's past performance.
- Read the Carbon Management Plan
(note: this plan is not set in stone. It is intended to be a living document and will therefore be regularly reviewed and updated. It includes indicative costings and projected carbon savings that will be refined as projects are scoped in greater detail)
DECC's real-time energy display
DECC’s real-time energy display went live in June 2010 – less than one month after the Prime Minister’s visit to the Department. Capturing electricity and gas use in our London headquarters, the online tool displays real-time energy information that is updated every five seconds. It provides an at-a-glance view of energy use over the last 24 hours. As more data has been collected, options for displaying the data in different ways – for example, to show electricity and gas consumption separately or to show information over longer periods of time – have been developed.
You can see the assumptions behind the tool and access the raw data collected on the Carbon Culture website. Look for the feedback link on the tool itself. The online tool has three main purposes: first, we want to be transparent about the amount and costs of the energy we use; second, we want the tool to provide a further incentive to reduce our energy use; third, we want the tool to demonstrate how easily others can use real-time information to make their own savings.
The pilot version of the tool is the first step in the implementation within DECC’s HQ of a behaviour change programme.
CarbonCulture
Our partnership with CarbonCulture is a significant and exciting new project. CarbonCulture at DECC is a user-centred, design-led project aiming to create genuine energy savings in DECC’s HQ through behaviour change of building users. At the core of the project is a design process that will develop best practice social-technological behaviour change techniques in conjunction with highly accurate real-time data provided by metering and sensors throughout the building. The approach will generate valuable energy performance data for staff and management, producing the highest quality analytics and enabling high performance improvements to be implemented as and when required. The project will create best practice examples of behaviour change and carbon reduction. By the end of the project we will have developed an evidence base on what works and what does not, how much control and influence building users have over energy demand and a sense of the scalability of the solution.
10:10 campaign
DECC signed up to the 10:10 campaign in November 2009, making a commitment to reduce our carbon emissions by 10% in 2010 compared to 2009. Thanks to the Department’s ambitious existing carbon saving plans, we actually achieved more than double this – with a saving of 20.59% or 547 tonnes of CO2. Details of our savings in the four key areas covered by the 10:10 campaign are shown in the table below:
| |
Grid electricity (tonnes CO2) |
On-site fossil fuel use (tonnes CO2) |
Vehicle fuel use* |
Air travel (tonnes CO2) |
Total (tonnes CO2) |
| 2009 |
1,111.64 |
216.259 |
0 |
1,329.089 |
2,656.988 |
| 2010 |
985.583 |
103.331 |
0 |
1,020.988 |
2,109.902 |
| Change |
-11.34% |
-52.22% |
- |
-23.18% |
-20.59% |
*Note that the 10:10 campaign's methodology only includes fuel use from vehicles owned by the organisation. DECC does not own any vehicles, hence the figure is zero.
DECC offsets all of its official air travel emissions through the Government Carbon Offsetting Facility. Further information can be found on our Public Sector Offsetting page.
Carbon Trust Standard
DECC achieved the Carbon Trust Standard for our HQ building in October 2010.
Energy use – past performance
DECC has been implementing a carbon reduction plan since April 2009 and measuring progress on a monthly basis. The initiatives put in place have resulted in a significant and sustained improvement in energy performance. The energy consumption from our estate and operations has almost halved over the past three years and our carbon emissions have fallen by more than a third. The graph below summarises the monthly carbon dioxide emissions from the DECC estate – 3 Whitehall Place in London and Atholl House in Aberdeen – over the past three years (before DECC’s creation in October 2008 these buildings were occupied by other government departments).
Past projects
Many of the early changes we made in the building relate to more intelligent use of the building management system – to optimise the controls of our lighting, heating and cooling – and will not be visible to staff or visitors. Yet these measures have had – and will continue to have – a significant impact on our carbon emissions, with a short payback period. Most large buildings are in a similar position, and could reduce their energy use quite significantly through simple changes to their building management systems.
Projects have included:
- adjustments to the software controlling the boilers to make them more efficient
- a major overhaul of the air-conditioning system
- the installation of automatic switches and timers on lighting
- the deployment of very low energy computer monitors across DECC
Display Energy Certificate (DEC) performance
Public buildings are required to display a Display Energy Certificate (full version attached), which represents actual energy use. The rating is calculated based on historical energy use throughout the previous 12 months and is represented as a letter between A and G. It is also given a numerical score, which represents comparative energy efficiency. A typical score for a building like 3 Whitehall Place would be 100, which is the boundary between a D and an E.
3 Whitehall Place
On 1 October 2008, when DECC first began moving into 3 Whitehall Place, it received a rating of G (165) – the lowest. This presented the Department with a challenge to greatly improve the building’s efficiency and an opportunity to demonstrate that such changes can be made cost-effectively. Since then we have been working hard to lower DECC’s overall carbon emissions and improve the energy efficiency of our London HQ, despite a significant increase in occupancy levels.
The building’s rating is now D (85), which was awarded in October 2011. This is obviously a significant improvement but work continues to improve the rating further.
This table provides the full list of DEC ratings for the building since October 2008:
| Date |
DEC rating |
Score |
| October 2011 |
D |
85 |
| April 2011 |
D |
100 |
| November 2010 |
E |
114 |
| May 2010 |
E |
121 |
| November 2009 |
F |
150 |
| October 2008 |
G |
165 |
Further information can be found on the Communities and Local Government: Display Energy Certificates web pages.
New DEC Rating for 55 Whitehall - January 2012
55 Whitehall, recently added to the DECC estate, has been awarded a new Display Energy Certificate (DEC) rating. The building had a ‘D’ rating with a score of 79 when DECC took over the building at the beginning of April 2011.
This has gone up to a B rating with a score of 49 from January 2012. This improved rating reflects the basic energy saving measures we have introduced since taking control of the building which include reviewing and reprogramming building management controls including hot water delivery schedules, reprogramming zip taps, controls over radiator thermostats and adjusting passive infra red (PIR) controls.
55 Whitehall is a more energy efficient building than 3 Whitehall Place, right next door, as it is naturally ventilated (i.e. we rely on opening the windows in the summer rather than air conditioning). We are continuing to look for ways to improve the efficiency of this building.
Other Challenges
The results of the Sustainable Operations on the Government Estate (SOGE) and Sustainable Development in Government (SDiG) targets have been published on the Defra website.
We are now playing our part in delivering the Greening Government Commitments, which replaced the SOGE targets from 1 April 2011.
We are also participating in the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme.
The Government has made a commitment that Departments should only procure food, subject to no overall increase in costs, that meets UK or equivalent standards of production and should publish information on this. Catering is provided on DECC’s estate through a shared contract with Defra and data on the food procured through this contact is available on the Defra website.