Energy Awareness Campaign
As a member of staff or student at the University you have significant control over the amount of electricity you use on campus every day.
During the 2008/09 academic year the Sustainability Team aims to reduce University electricity consumption by 5% by launching a campus wide energy awareness campaign.
Find out What You Can Do to save energy today!
Save it Information
Coming soon...
Our Environmental Co-ordinators are busy surveying all the photocopiers across campus. By the end of January we hope to have as many of these as possible on automatic timers so that they switch off over night.
Throughout 2009 we plan to roll out our energy awareness programme following a building-by-building approach so watch out for that!
Previous activities...
EcoCampus Bronze Award Achieved!
Find out more on our blog.
New Student?
First of all, welcome to Newcastle University! As a new student there is lots you can do to help us reduce the environmental impact of the university, such as taking advantage of the recycling facilities in your halls and on campus, and remembering to switch off any electrical equipment when not in use.
Energy used in student accommodation makes up 19% of the University's carbon footprint, emitting around the same amount of carbon dioxide as 1,500 homes.
What you can do
Check out the following pages:
- What you can do to save energy
- What you can recycle
What the university is doing
If you have a bit more time why not browse this website further. You'll find a range of information including more about our team and how the university manages it's carbon emissions and wider environmental impacts through EcoCampus.
Want to get more involved?
Why not contact your Ethics and Environment Officers, Katie Ball and Tom Delamere. Find out more on the Union Society website.
Environmental Sustainability Policy
Have you read Newcastle University's draft Environmental Sustainability Policy?
This has been recently reviewed and approved by senior management as part of EcoCampus (the sector specific Environmental Management System (EMS) that is currently being implemented across campus). One of the next stages of EcoCampus is to identify all the activities carried out by the university that have a significant impact on the environment. This will enable a finalised Environmental Sustainability Policy to be agreed which includes specific objectives relating to these activities.
Display Energy Certificates: How well does your building score?
Display Energy Certificates (DECs) are starting to appear across the campus. These certificates are required by the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive for public buildings over 1000m2.
The University has 39 buildings requiring a DEC. The aim of DECs is to show building users how energy efficiently their building is being used.
The rating is based on actual energy used by the building, not on how efficient the building was designed to be.
A rating of D or above means that the building uses energy more efficiently than a typical building of its type. 11 of University's buildings achieved these ratings in 2009.
Find our more about Display Energy Certificates and the University's 2009 ratings.
As a building user you can help us improve these ratings by taking simple energy saving actions. For more information see what you can do.
World Environment Day Event - Friday 5th June 
Thanks to everyone that made it to the World Environment Day Event on Friday.
Although the weather wasn't on our side we were pleasantly surprised that so many of you came along to find out more.
The free tree saplings proved very popular! 170 were given away on the day, supporting the UNEP 7 Billion Tree Campaign which aims to have one new tree planted for every person alive as an empowering symbol of the global public's desire for action to tackle this generation’s greatest challenge.
42 people also took part in our Sustainability Quiz and were entered into the prize draw. Prizes were a veg box, smart energy meter, £50 cycle voucher, Patagonia fleece (made from 25 recycled bottles), a solar charger, and a selection of cycling accessories. The prize winners are:
- Elaine Patterson - Marketing and Communications Directorate
- Ros Clough - Robinson Library
- Tricia Thompson - Marketing and Communications Directorate
- Elizabeth Pallister - GPS
- Janet Moss - ECLS
- Katie Wray - Careers Service
If you weren't able to make the event, or you just want to find out more, why not take a look at What you can do for some pointers on how you can help save energy on campus. Or, if you want to find out about all the materials you can now recycle on campus see What can I recycle?
Night Survey Results - how did your building perform?
On Tuesday 3 March the ESS Sustainability Team completed a night energy survey of the campus. View the Night Survey Results to see how well your building performed.
Earth Hour 2009 - thanks for your support
Between 8:30pm and 9.30pm on Saturday 28 March Newcastle University participated in Earth Hour 2009 to show our support for global action on climate change.
The photos on the right show the Old Quad (Architecture and Fine Art Buildings). As you can see we managed to get most of the lights off but even the Energy Team couldn't get them all off! We will be investigating why some of the lighting controls in the Architecture building were not working.
In addition to the switch off in the Old Quad we aimed to get as much internal lighting as possible switched off around campus. Friday 27th March became our first 'Switch Off Friday' when we asked you all to give switching off an extra thought before you left for the weekend. Your efforts were much appreciated and a further improvement on the recent night survey was evident. Thanks and well done to all!
If you'd like to find out more about saving energy on campus see our What you can do section for some pointers.
Thanks to everyone who recycled their Christmas cards.
- This year 234.31Kg of Christmas Cards were recycled from various collection points across campus – that’s slightly more than last year.
Thanks to all those that switched off over Christmas.
- We can now confirm that we achieved a saving of 0.5% compared to Christmas 2007, and significant savings in comparison to our average weekday and weekend consumption. View our Christmas Switch off Summary for further details.
Make energy saving your New Year's resolution! Find out more in the What You Can Do section.
Switch off at Christmas
We want to achieve the lowest energy consumption during the Christmas break in the last five years.
If we achieve this the University will save around £23,000 and 94 tonnes of CO2. That’s enough to fill 73 hot air balloons!
Get involved by following our 12 Tips at Christmas.
Save it Launch
‘Save it for Newcastle University’ was launched to coincide with national Energy Saving Week, 20th – 26th October 2008.
To kick off the programme we arranged events in the Medical School, Old Library Building and Union Society Building. Staff and students were given the opportunity to meet the ESS Sustainability Team and to find our more about our energy saving projects and how they could save energy on campus and at home.
Robyn from the Energy Saving Trust also attended the Old Library Building event and gave impartial advice on saving energy at home to many staff and students and gave out lots of free low energy light bulbs. The Energy Saving Trust advice centre has a wide range of information leaflets on making your home more efficient, sustainable transport and renewable energy technologies. To find our more visit www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/northeast or call the local freephone advice line on 0800 512 012.
Everyone that attended the events was asked to complete an Energy Saving Action Card. This listed a number of simple energy saving actions that they could take on campus so save energy, asking which actions they already took and which others they would be willing to start doing.
In total 464 people completed an Energy Saving Action Card and each received a free recycled plastic mug. They were also automatically entered into a prize draw. View details of the prizes and winners.
During the launch week we also arranged a showing of ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ which proved a real eye-opener for those that attended. If you’ve not seen it yet, it’s well worth a watch!