The Carbon Trust has given us more confidence and the support to help make this happen. It's enabled us to see best practice outside of the service, and the structured approach helped us to organise ourselves better internally.
Tom Brockbanks, Energy Project Manager, HMPS
The business case
The Service, which has a £45 million energy bill – the second largest in the public sector – has committed to spending at least £1 million per year on energy saving projects from 2010 to 2015. It has also secured a £2.1 million Salix loan to help fund projects across 30 prisons – including the installation of condensing boilers and new pipework. It aims to cut emissions by 3% year on year, on the back of this investment.
The approach
Automatic metering will be retrofitted across the estate – providing the energy team with a far more accurate view of how energy is being used, while helping them measure the success of projects and build the business case for future interventions. Elsewhere, voltage optimisation equipment is showing impressive results at Cardiff prison, and the Service is keen to roll this out more widely.
Energy champions have also been appointed across the estate, encouraging staff and prisoners to take more responsibility for their own energy use. And at HMP Ford in West Sussex inmates are taking part in a training scheme to turn leftover cooking oil into biofuel, which is then used in vehicles at the prison and other council equipment.
HMPS is responsible for 84,000 prisoners in England and Wales, and employs 75,000 staff across 128 prisons and numerous non-custodial buildings.
Find out more about expert advice for central government (including prisons, the armed forces, non-departmental government bodies, museums and galleries) to reduce energy costs and cut emissions.