Okehampton College achieves another 25% drop in gas across year

Okehampton College had already achieved impressive energy reductions when it received an Ashden Award in 2010. But the College's steps to reduce their energy consumption and CO2 did not stop there. Over the last year the College has reduced its gas consumption by 25%.

Keith Webber, Community Technology Coordinator at Okehampton, says:

"Our energy budget was set at £100,000 for the financial year - which is typically what we had previously been spending. But our net energy expenditure for this financial year will be around £55,500. This includes sports pitch floodlights and all electrical meters on site and takes into account the clean energy cash back of around £7,000 from feed-in tariffs. I believe there is still a further £10,000 of savings we can make."

Okehampton College's total energy consumption has gone down from 649,286 kWh in 2005 to 252,000 kWh in 2010. This represents a huge cost saving.

"If we were consuming at our 2005 rates, our bill would now be 2.5 times as much. We now have well-developed plans to use further renewable energy installations to realistically reach zero bills by this time next year. Importantly, this will also dramatically reduce our CO2 emissions as well."

Keith says there are strong financial incentives to continue looking for more energy savings:

"We currently are still only paying 9p a unit for electricity but can expect a sharp rise when the contract expires, this could increase by over 30% to maybe 12 or 13p a unit."

(Pic: Keith Webber, the Community Technology Coordinator at Okehampton College)