7. Summary of Key Carbon Reduction Findings and Recommendations

Contracted by Ashfield District Council, NCC Energy Services have also completed:

1. Energy analysis report, analysing past energy consumption across the highest consuming sites in the Ashfield Council
2. Solar feasibility studies outlining two clear cases installing solar PV systems at Hucknall Leisure Centre and Lammas Leisure Centre. Additionally, further preliminary proposals are outlined for other sites as part of the Ashfield estate³¹.
3. A series of 6 energy audits across the Ashfield District Council internal property portfolio (key archetypes), assessing the current efficiency status of the selected properties and recommending improvement measures to save money and reduce carbon emissions with a view to enabling a more sustainable portfolio to be developed going

For the energy analysis report, key recommendations on monitoring have been made, which are included in Section 9. The energy analysis report is intended to prompt investigations into gas or electrical equipment and controls at the various sites. In some cases this identifies where there may be an opportunity to improve the efficiency of the building, and in others identifying a recent change that has taken place which has impacted the energy consumption. Investigating these may help to reduce energy consumption, and thus carbon emissions.

Not all increases in consumption are indications of a problem, e.g. if occupancy levels or opening hours of a building have increased due to business needs then energy usage will likely follow suit. However it is then important to re-baseline the site’s consumption so that this extra ‘necessary’ consumption is taken into account.

Understanding why the energy usage changed is key to correcting extant issues, preventing reoccurrence of past issues and knowing which measures/initiatives have provided meaningful reductions for both energy and carbon.

The main carbon saving recommendations from parts 2 and 3 of the wider NCC Energy Services contracted works are summarised in the table below with their potential carbon savings³². Note, this is based on singular measures and calculations do not include interdependencies between measures so figures demonstrate an absolute maximum. A full implementation plan would be required if ADC wanted the actual achievable based on order of installation. Further information on the recommendations are included within the respective reports.

To note, this only includes the carbon savings included within the above listed NCC Energy Services’ works, and is not an exhaustive list of carbon recommendations for the full ADC estate. The approach will need to be replicated across the remaining estate to establish overall potential savings. The table below also includes key recommendations at Leisure Centres, which are not part of this Carbon Management Plan report.

Leisure Centre Recommendations (emissions from leisure centres not included within CMP report)

³¹ ADC have since contracted NCC Energy Services to undertake a Stage 2 feasibility study of one of these sites (Northern Depot).

³² Carbon savings demonstrated are based on 2019 UK Government GHG conversion factors: Gas kgCO2e 0.18385 Electricity kgCO2e 0.2256

+ 0.0217 (losses). Solar PV figures are adjusted from the solar feasibility proposals to be consistent with other values in the table (inclusion of loss savings).

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• 6. Wider Context: Ashfield Area Emissions

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• 8. Carbon Management Action Plan