Environmental Sustainability

Energy

Carbon Management Programme

Climate change is probably the most significant environmental issue facing the global community, with scientific evidence clearly pointing to human activity as warming the climate. The response to climate change needs to come from everyone - right down to the borough of Barking and Dagenham.

We are looking at how we can reduce energy wastage from our own activities and buildings with the help of the Carbon Trust's Carbon Management Programme.

This programme is designed to support local authorities who want to put in place a whole array of energy saving measures across their entire organisation. Our programme mainly focuses on the corporate building stock, street lighting, fleet vehicle mileage and influencing staff behaviour.

Our carbon management programme is expected to deliver:

A 20% reduction in energy consumption over the next 3 years
A shared work programme with energy efficiency activity undertaken by a large number of staff across the council
A regular monitoring procedure to identify where energy savings have been made and where further work is required
A regular reporting procedure for energy consumption and carbon emissions
An organisational focus on energy efficiency that will enable us to continue reducing our carbon emissions into the future

25 energy efficiency projects and activities have been identified for the next 2 years and £1 million from Council budgets has been earmarked for their implementation. We will also bid for external funding to increase the amount of money spent on energy efficiency projects.

A strategy and implementation plan for the programme sets out in detail the 25 energy efficiency projects that we have identified. 3 projects we will implement as a priority are:

Installing heating, cooling and boiler controls to make sure that the heating runs at the correct times and temperature in key buildings such as the Civic Centre, Town Hall and Goresbrook Leisure Centre. These controls will coordinate and reduce energy usage in buildings so that air conditioning can not be on at the same time as central heating for example
Install voltage optimisation technology in up to 20 council buildings - this technology reduces electricity consumption (and electricity bills) by an average of 15%; and
A green champions programme across the whole council. This programme aims to encourage staff to adopt 'green' behaviour in the workplace, such as switching off their monitors at night and not filling the kettle with more water than they need

Strategy and Implementation Plan PDF 214K