Carbon, energy and water management

UWE Bristol's new School of Engineering building on Frenchay campus has achieved an "Excellent" rating for its green credentials from the international scheme BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method).

Examples of the sustainability best practice employed in the building include having lots of natural ventilation, installing PV (solar) panels, connection to UWE Bristol's district heating network, use of underfloor heating and use of materials with high thermal mass (the ability of a material to absorb and store heat energy).

Alistair Brooke, Assistant Director of Estates commented on the project: "A fantastic achievement for UWE Bristol and the Project Team. Strong collaboration enabled sustainability to be embedded from the early stages of the project and ultimately led to the success of the scheme. The project is a further endorsement of UWE Bristol's commitment to sustainability and innovation across its estate."

Our new, 900-bed student accommodation is being built to Passivhause standards, and will be of the largest low-carbon certified developments of its kind anywhere in the world. It is also a first for the university sector in the UK.

Once complete, the buildings will yield a 54% reduction in running costs and carbon emissions compared with a typical ‘good practice’ building. Find out more about our new accommodation build. 

A low carbon district heating network supplied by gas-fired combined heat and power (CHP) plant has been in operation since November 2020. It meets 35% of the Frenchay Campus heat requirements and 21% of all the electricity used on the campus. It saves 700 tonnes of carbon dioxide (tCO₂) per year and provide a financial payback within seven years. Funding has now been secured to extend the network in 2024/25 in readiness for installing additional low carbon heat sources in line with the Heat Decarbonisation Plan.

The CHP is housed in the T-block Energy Centre, with the district heating network supplying heat to the following buildings on campus: the Students’ Union building, the School of Business and Law building, the new Engineering building, the Frenchay Library, Robotics, the University Enterprise Zone, the Exhibition and Conference Centre and part of the Wallscourt Park residences. During 2024/25, the network will extend to S block, A-N blocks, Q block, R block, the Farmhouse and the remainder of Wallscourt park residences.

In the summer of 2020 a project started to upgrade the electric heating and the controls in the Student Village. This covered around 70% of the rooms. The new heating controls, supplied by Prefect, have built in PIRs ensuring less energy waste because the controls switch off after 10 minutes of inactivity in the room. The new controls now give the students control over whether they want their heating in low, medium or high mode and can also use the boost setting for extra heat. Along with this, accommodation staff can make changes via a web portal rather than having to enter student bedrooms. Other energy saving measures include open window detection, which will sense a drop in temperature and determine that leaving the heating on would waste energy and will again switch off. 

Approx. savings seen in Brecon Court: Feb 2020 vs. Feb 2021 – 16% reduction in energy use, saving 15,300 kWh and 3.2 tCO₂e.

The remaining 30% of the Student Village was completed July-Sept 2021 ready for the new students arriving for the 2021/22 academic year.

Due to the success of this project it was decided in September 2020 that houses 1-38 in Wallscourt Park would also be upgraded from gas central heating to electric heating, using the same controls.  This had added benefits as some rooms were much hotter than others and now rather than struggling with a whole house system each room can be controlled individually.

Most recently (May 2021) The Hollies had a Prefect install to upgrade their heating controls to the same as those at the Student Village and Wallscourt Park House 1-38.  At the same time the hot water tanks had new heating elements installed (two per tank) which are more energy efficient, easier to manage via the online portal and don’t both run at the same time unless necessary, giving further energy savings.

Prefect controls are now specified as standard as part of any student accommodation new builds.

Over the last few years there have been some large lighting upgrades at UWE Bristol. In 2018/19 alone we committed £822,000 for a number of lighting design schemes which were projected to deliver 283 tonnes of carbon savings per year. LED fittings and intelligent controls were installed in areas including: the Exhibition and Conference Centre (internal and external lighting), S-block internal lighting, R-block external lighting, Mallard House internal and external lighting, Q-block internal lighting and Centre for Sports communal areas and corridors.

Other lighting upgrades have taken place throughout the estate, although these have been smaller projects. The lighting in T Block storage area was upgraded from sodium fittings to LED’s which is estimated to have saved 155,800 kWh and 39.5 tCO₂ each year.

Lighting on Level 3 of the Arnolfini was upgraded in 2022, replacing fluorescent fittings with LEDs.

There are still patches of older lighting across the estate which will be upgraded to LED over the coming few years. Sometimes this will be as standalone projects but may also be included as part of area refurbishments.

There is a plan to upgrade old, inefficient transformers across the estate. The E and N Block transformers at Frenchay Campus were the first to have been changed to new technology. The estimated savings for these two blocks are 75,000 kWh and 19 tCO₂ per year.

This was followed by Frenchay B Block and F Block transformer upgrades. These upgrades are estimated to provide savings of 47,000 kWh / 12 tCO₂ and 94,000 kWh / 24tCO₂ respectively.

Further transformers will be changed over the coming years.

Pipework insulation has been installed/upgraded in various plant room areas across all campuses in a bid to minimise wasted heat. This is an ongoing programme with further pipework insulation being installed where necessary.

All of the UWE Bristol solar photovoltaic arrays are regularly maintained and cleaned to ensure that they are providing optimal performance. There is also a desire to add more PV arrays and a feasibility study has been undertaken at Frenchay Campus and Bower Ashton Campus to identify the best roofs for further installations.

In the coming years the plan is to add PV to all appropriate roofs. This will form part of UWE Bristol’s route to meeting its net zero target by 2030. All new buildings will have PV added to them and existing buildings will have PV retrofitted wherever possible.

Our Energy Management Software records consumption of electricity, gas, water and heat from over 1,200 meters across the UWE Bristol sites. This data is used to monitor and measure consumption, enabling variations in profile to be spotted and investigated. This data is also available for students and academics to use for projects, ensuring that we use our own campus as a Living Lab.

We are continually developing and extending the coverage of the automatic metering infrastructure on all campuses to allow greater monitoring and measurement of energy consumption.