Southampton city council

One step closer to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2030. 

 

Where did it all begin?

The historic seaport city of Southampton set itself an ambitious target of achieving net zero by 2030, way back in 2019.

Since then, they’ve been working hard to put together a decisive carbon reduction programme that covers enhancing the energy efficiency of city buildings and making use of renewables.

Now, thanks to a programme of work recently completed by the team at E.ON Control Solutions, working on behalf of Southampton City Council's (SCC) energy supplier and sister organisation, npower Business Solutions (nBS) and programme managers Faithful & Gould, the historic waterside city has taken some significant steps closer to its goal.

How do you reduce carbon emissions across an entire city?

A whole of range of decarbonisation technologies now exist, here are just a few ways Southampton has implemented them across the city.

LED light

Windows and lighting

The city’s Lordshill Library has new double-glazed windows reducing heat loss and noise and LED lighting was fitted here and at the household waste and recycling centre, City Depot, at nearly half the cost inefficient fluorescent lighting.

More about energy efficient lighting
Solar panels

Solar and heat pumps

Solar PV panels now adorn the roof of key council buildings and the household waste and recycling centre, City Depot, has a new air source heat pump and LED lighting further supporting significant cost and carbon savings.

More about solar PV

Energy efficiency

The Sea City Museum installed modified air handling units to increase efficiencies and reduce bills. Variable speed drive technologies are also cutting costs and emissions by enabling operations such as air conditioning to be tailored to occupancy.

More about energy efficiency
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Developing a decarbonisation funding case

Southampton city council (SCC) worked with the E.ON control solutions team to develop a funding case to pay for their decarbonisation measures through securing a PSDS (Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme) grant. As a member of the LASER framework1 SCC was able to utilise existing framework arrangements to support their PSDS application.

Southampton’s application was successful, and the council was awarded £1.7m for work across seven key buildings in their estate.

How did they decide which technologies to implement?

Beginning with feasibility audits of each of the buildings E.ON control solutions and the SCC team were able to identify the most suitable technologies to include in their PSDS phase one application. This included things like analysing half-hourly electricity and gas data to identify any abnormalities in the energy usage profiles for each site. This information helped us identify potential high-level interventions that our team could explore in more detail during the site audit stage. The sites were also revisited at different times during the day to identify any differences in usage, and to highlight where energy-consuming equipment was still running when it was not required.

Tailoring interventions site by site from these audits, a report was generated for each building with specific interventions and technologies recommended, including efficiency measures, air source heat pumps, roof-mounted solar PV, LED lighting, building fabric insulation, and new controls and upgrades to building energy management systems. Detailed analysis including forecasted energy and carbon-saving calculations were also submitted. 

According to E.ON energy manager Brian Taylor "Basic energy efficiency measures alone identified annual savings of around 12 tonnes of CO2, or £12k in energy costs".

These reports were used to formulate SCC's stage one PSDS funding application.

'Our initial calculations suggest these improvements will collectively reduce our CO2 emissions by a minimum of 150 tonnes each year and save us £140k worth of energy at 2019 prices, which is significantly more today as prices have since doubled.

SCC Energy Manager Jason Taylor

From challenges to increased savings

Over the course of the project, there were challenges to overcome. For example, while installing a new solar system at the City Depot, we noticed an existing 55kW system wasn’t generating across two inverters, so we fixed these, reinstating 20kW of generating capacity, saving around £2.5k and 3.5 tonnes of CO2 each year.

During various project installations, the team at E.ON were also able to resolve unrelated operational issues. For example, we reset air handling units that were running 24/7, ensuring they operated around building occupancy times, so reducing running costs.

These savings are in addition to those generated by the installation of all the measures included in the PSDS funding programme.

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Delighting stakeholders

Now the work is complete, Jason says his stakeholders are delighted with the results.

Salix, the body that oversees the funding on behalf of the government, has also now evaluated all the work to check each intervention post installation. Jason is now focussed on the next stages of SCC’s net zero project.

“We achieved some impressive savings over seven flagship buildings. But to put this in context, we have more than 140 public buildings in our portfolio – everything from a public toilet right up to a huge civic centre. So, we still have a long way to go! But we’ve made an excellent start. And we’re now looking at projects for the next round of PSDS funding, as well as those we intend to finance ourselves out of future budget allocations.”

The team at Lordshill library are absolutely chuffed to bits with the finished work. When they left their site for the two-week installation project, they had old, noisy single glazed windows and dated lighting. But they returned to a quieter, warmer building with smart new doubled-glazed windows and brighter modern LED lighting.”

SCC Energy Manager Jason Taylor

Achieving net zero with us

As your partner for net zero we'll tailor and deliver a package of energy efficiency solutions to help you reduce your carbon emissions and streamline your energy management systems, using our expertise to get you to those all-important net zero targets.

 

 

Discover net zero partnerships

As your partner for net zero we'll tailor and deliver a package of energy efficiency solutions to help you reduce your carbon emissions and streamline your energy management systems, using our expertise to get you to those all-important net zero targets.

 

 

Discover net zero partnerships

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