22 January 2013
Church members are being encouraged to use January's freezing temperatures as a starting point for monitoring their building's energy useage, as part of the Shrinking the Footprint national energy audit, using sMeasure.
The free, easy to use toolkit from Shrinking the Footprint, the CofE's national environmental campaign, enables all church buildings - historic and modern - to understand and reduce energy use and costs along with cutting their carbon footprint
The online tool simply requires regular meter readings to be submitted at www.shrinkingthefootprint.smeasure.com. ?Users will also be provided with tips for saving money and reducing their carbon footprint.? Staff support and advice in energy monitoring and reduction are available as well as technical help.
In a new CofE videocast published today (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdDk2icT7tQ ) the Revd Ruth Lampard, Associate Vicar at St Mary the Boltons in London Diocese shows how regular meter reading can lead to energy saving initiatives with significant long-term benefits. The church, which has made energy and financial savings, even has a thermometer in the pulpit to make sure the congregation is warm enough but not overheated.
The Bishop of London, Dr Richard Chartres, chair of Shrinking the Footprint, said: "It is a God-given imperative that we guard the earth for future generations. This energy audit aims to build a better understanding of our energy usage and total carbon footprint for our national network of 16,000 parish churches, so we can support energy saving actions and meet our commitment to protecting God's creation".
The national energy audit has been successfully piloted in more than 300 churches and schools; the pilot was funded by LEAF - Local Energy Assessment Fund - a Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) grant administered by the Energy Saving Trust.
Once 20 buildings in a diocese are taking part in the energy audit a diocese peer group will be created on the website. This will allow the diocese to track and benchmark combined building energy and carbon emission results and identify buildings that require additional support.
The Diocese of London has been measuring and monitoring the energy use of its churches since 2005 through its annual return, and has been using the Diocese's bespoke system of Energy-saving Benchmarking since 2009. Since 2005, cumulative year-on-year savings of 3% in energy use and carbon emissions have been recorded. Energy-saving Benchmarking, which is also used by a number of dioceses in the south west*, will sit alongside sMeasure's new online energy monitoring tool, with the aim of combining them into a fully integrated Church of England system.
Notes:
The national energy audit uses the sMeasure online tool and is available for free to all Church of England buildings. It displays energy data in a range of charts, including comparing heating use with local outside temperatures to identify the building's efficiency and grading the building's energy performance against other similar buildings. The ability to analyse regular meter readings enables a greater understanding of energy use, leading to energy saving actions and the ability to quantify and evaluate consumption, cost and carbon savings from these actions.
Find out more about energy monitoring and how your building can take part at www.churchcare.co.uk/shrinking-the-footprint or get started straight away at www.shrinkingthefootprint.smeasure.com.
Shrinking the Footprint is the Church of England's national environmental campaign aimed at helping the Church's 44 dioceses and 16,000 churches reduce their carbon footprint. www.shrinkingthefootprint.org.
The campaign was set up in 2005 when General Synod voted to set a carbon reduction target for the Church, now 80% by 2050, in line with UK government commitments. Shrinking the Footprint is a cross-divisional campaign involving both Cathedral and Church Buildings and Mission and Public Affairs.
The Diocese of London's Energy-saving Benchmarking tool assesses the energy use and carbon emissions of individual churches in the Diocese. This allows an understanding of how efficient their churches are, compared to each other and a common standard - taking account of their size, attendance and a church's various activities. A perecentage savings target for energy and carbon is set for each church, and an action plan offered for how to achieve it.
* Energy-saving Benchmarking is also used by Bath & Wells, Bristol, Exeter, Gloucester, Salisbury and Truro Dioceses.
Individuals can make use of iMeasure - a free web-based energy and carbon monitoring solution for households that uses weather data to accurately assess homes' energy efficiency. http://www.imeasure.org.uk.?
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