Spend to Save

At the Council Meeting on 8th April David Chappell called on the Council to set up a small 'ring fenced fund' to promote savings on energy costs that would both save the Council money and reduce our carbon footprint.

My recommendation was: That St Edmundsbury Borough Council should consider a small ring-fenced fund for making incremental improvements in the efficiency of their own buildings. By investing back into the fund, major cumulative savings can be produced over a 10 to 15 year period.

I commended the Borough on the way the Public Service Village's contributed to energy savings and referred to the example of Woking Borough Council. That Council had set aside £250,000 in 1990 to fund small improvements in energy efficiency, and then reinvested the savings back into the fund to provide further funds for further energy efficiency measures. Through this initial investment the Borough has generated savings of £4 million and I commended the Borough to follow the lead, and also pointed out that this was a Local Government Organisation recommendation.

The initial fund generated small improvements across the Borough's property changing tungsten light bulbs to compact fluorescent tubes. By reinvesting the savings they went on to replace oil fired boilers and electrical heating systems with condensing boilers and heating. Later there was enough money to build a new sheltered care housing scheme using combined heat and power (CHP) and solar power. Eventually the project grew so extensive that they set up a wholly owned limited company, Thamesway Ltd, to manage it. As a limited company they were not restricted to capitol controls and went on to build the England's first commercially operating CHP station, which distributes electricity through private wire networks, and both hot and cold water via private pipe networks to a range of local business.