During the Covid inspired spring of 2020 and following a formal ITT tender exercise, which CLS Energy won, we were invited to work with Gloucester City Council to assess their data, audit their estate, fleet and renewable opportunities and deliver a baseline for them.
Beyond this we were tasked to find actionable energy and carbon savings for Council’s estate and its Amey and Enterprise managed fleet. This in order to assist them towards a trajectory to meet their 2030 zero carbon council science-based target as well as their 2050 zero carbon city targets.
We were also tasked with setting out justifications for the scopes of various operations that are currently outsourced and managed by others on behalf of the Council.
From our investment grade assessments of the Council’s principal sites, we were able to demonstrate over £273,000 of savings from energy efficiency measures with average paybacks at 1.75 years. These included aspects such as controls over specific Building Management System (BMS) controls of the operations, as well as enhancements to air handling units, compressors and chillers; measures such as improved space heating technologies, fan motors, insulation and boiler optimisation as well as a wide range of behavioural and good practice regimes.
We were further able to determine ten separate refuse and recycling fleet recommendations with over £68,000 in fleet saving measures, six of which with paybacks of under 1.67 years.
We found fourteen site specific opportunities for renewable technologies (including Solar PV, Wind Turbines and Heat pumps) with savings of over £639,000 and average paybacks of 6.53 years.
We have been able to demonstrate a path to zero carbon for electricity and fleet by 2030 without the need for offsetting and provided the Council a range of opportunities to move away from gas in order to complete the picture.
The Council now has a legitimate and independently assessed science-based carbon (CO2e) baseline and a set of calculated and fully costed measures to allow them to act effectively.
Below is what they have been kind enough to say of us:
“Alan from CLS approached our carbon reduction plan with a forensic attitude to his work, rooting out carbon and financial savings in the often over-looked corners of our council operations.
I would have no hesitation in recommending him to other organisations”.
M.B. Gloucester City Council. 10th March 2020
Following our work producing these two reports, we have been invited to work on a range of other projects including Salix funding, for which we were successful in being awarded over £537,000 to install a ground source heat pump, solar PV array, battery storage and lighting at the Aspire managed Oxstalls Sports Centre.
We are now assisting the Council with implementation advice on this project and additional site assessments including the assessment of Gloucester Airport on behalf of the Council and Cheltenham Borough Council.
Image of GL1 swimming pool is kindly provided by Aspire Sports and Cultural Trust
