The University of Essex has been recognised as one of an elite group of organisations nationwide for its continued investment into energy efficiency.

The award, under the Energy Efficiency Accreditation Scheme, which is managed by the Carbon Trust and externally moderated by the Energy Institute, is the only independent recognition for achievements in improving energy efficiency available to industry, commerce and the public sector.

The University’s Energy manager Richard Frost said: ‘To gain this accreditation has taken two years of hard work to meet the strict criteria. It demonstrates to students and the local community our strategic commitment to energy efficiency across all our campuses. We don’t want the University to be a beacon just for teaching and research, but also to be recognised for its sustainable credentials’.

The current initiative Richard is leading involves a major scheme to install lighting controls in corridors and seminar rooms, so they switch on automatically only when the area is occupied.

This is just a small part of the investment currently taking place and being delivered by the University’s Estate Management Section which also includes the installation of new high efficiency condensing boilers.

Greater use of sustainable technologies will play a major role in all new building stock, such as the sustainable form of comfort cooling in the new state of the art 1000 seater Ivor Crewe Lecture Hall opened last year which uses water instead of ozone depleting refrigerants to cool the building. The Estate Management Section target is to save the equivalent of 1000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

Work continues apace; it includes staff awareness projects and for the first time, energy efficiency will be promoted as part of Freshers’ Week for new students in the autumn. The University is developing a new degree course for 2008 on Alternative Energy Systems, focussing on renewable energy.

The Energy Efficiency Accreditation will be formally presented to the University at the end of the year.