All aboard the Net Zero rollercoaster ride

Strap in, hold tight, stay with us on this Net Zero ride. Warning: It’s a long one, and to reach the end quickly we‘ll be doing maths as we go!

Sustainability isn’t easy and it doesn’t come cheap, especially with Imperial’s large and complicated estate, so the first rule is ‘spend the money where it will have the most impact’. (Actually, strictly speaking, the first rule is ‘reduce demand’, but you know that already, right?).

We get that you want visible evidence of sustainability; renewables, such as solar panels on every roof. The truth is that for the amount of electricity panels will generate towards our needs, our funds are better spent improving building fabric to reduce our energy use; such measures as glazing and the insulation of walls and roofs.

It’s time to get started now; and map the route of that rollercoaster ride to our 2040 targets.

Chugging

The Imperial estate is huge. There are more than 100 buildings including residences, spread over eleven campuses and other sites. Because of that complexity our decarbonisation plan had to be drawn up with the help of experts. Consultants Arup have been working with us on this for more than a year.  Arup surveyed our estate, ruled out buildings that are new, (White City South Campus is already designed to be fossil-fuel free and low carbon) or set to be replaced, or decommissioned. They were able to identify where spending will have the most impact and can be done ‘early, next and later’ (later tending to mean expensive and less cost-effective infrastructure works).

As we chugged up to the start of the ride, the resulting recommendations received approval from University Management Board.

We're off!

Now we able to share our journey more widely, especially as we draw up delivery plans that will affect our building users, while minimising disruption (there has to be some, that’s unavoidable, but no reason to stall), so we’re off!

To be clear, this part of our plan relates to what are known as Scope 1 (Imperial owned) and 2 emissions (indirect from energy we purchase and use). Other activities, not completely within our control, such as travel, are not part of this ride, belonging to a wider sustainability plan.

Look out!

Look out - here's a twist in the track - we are asked, what about creating a new South Kensington heat network and sharing this with the other institutions around Exhibition Road? Truth again: their energy needs and ours aren’t necessarily the same, or even compatible. We are looking with the South Ken Zero Emissions Neighbourhood (SKZEN) initiative at other potential schemes, though, including ground and air source heat pumps funded by the Mayor of London. However, this may be in the ‘later ‘category. Our focus remains on our current plans.

Straight on

Back to the straight: ‘early’ has been defined as within the next five years, when we will be taking actions that make sound business sense, such as electrification of the main kitchens, replacing lighting with LED, and upgrading building control systems to improve how our building services plant is controlled.  These will have the biggest impact on reducing electricity demand. Planned works and maintenance on this stretch will take every cost-effective opportunity to introduce measures including the favoured renewables – rooftop solar panels where there is space. Worth noting, this part of the journey will take us via Silwood Park, the campus with the optimum conditions to make solar harvesting financially stack up.

Reviews of our route will be made annually, and as the next becomes now, and the later becomes next, plans re-evaluated, re-costed, taking us up and down on this long ride.  Works with the potential to attract supporting grant funding will be packaged together and bids made, and imaginative ways to raise funds for this work found. All the time checking our works all make absolute sense technically and allowing new innovations to be harnessed.

For the journey we’ve planned well ahead, taking heed of lessons learned by others, being sure to compare our apples with apples and not pears, equipped with the knowledge that we aren’t special, there is no ‘get out of jail’ card we can carry with us simply because we are an energy intensive STEM university, in fact. we must do better.

Every building now has its own condition report, recommendations, planned works, what’s possible and how those follow our road map. This will be available to the departments concerned through a Power BI dashboard and the conversations around this will be an integral part of progressing Imperial’s journey.

For now, though, we’re on the early wins straight track for the next few years.  As works start over the spring and summer you will start to see visible impact on our route.

Hold on tight!