Sara Whittaker sat down with Kevin Henderson, Head of Assets & IT at Trafford Leisure, to discuss the matter of sustainability, and how we are making moves towards a carbon neutral future within the business.
SARA
We hear in the news topics like climate change, climate emergency, de-carbonisation, net-zero, biodiversity net gain, green-washing, carbon literacy, air sourced heat pumps, hydrogen power, electric cars, green energy... Like every houseful, I’ve seen my own energy bills go up – a lot - and I’ve also seen the enormous energy bills for our leisure centres. I feel that for home and in work we should be doing more, but it can all seem quite overwhelming. I’m not particularly techy minded but I want to learn more. As Head of Assets, I’m wondering if you could explain what Trafford Leisure is doing or planning and maybe what I could do to help both at work and at home?
KEVIN
“Sure, well as you say things are costing a lot more; It’s a challenging time for everyone and certainly for businesses that consume large amounts of energy. The utility costs for the whole company now exceed £1M a year. So, maybe we can touch on some of those headline topics, then we’ll try and bring it down to a local Trafford Leisure (TLCIC) level. We can include some links to short videos that may help explain some of the topics in greater detail. In 2019, the UK government enshrined into law a target of net zero by 2050. Net zero relates to total carbon emissions not increasing any further. When we burn fossil fuels like natural gas and coal, we are continuing to release harmful gas compounds like cardon dioxide (Co2), Methane, sulphur and other ‘greenhouse’ gases into the atmosphere. The increasingly dense blanket of gases exasperates the ‘Greenhouse effect’. This 2 minute YouTube video explains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8Y6L5TI_94 Trafford council (TC) was one of the first local authorities to declare a climate emergency & produced a Carbon Neutral Action Plan: https://www.trafford.gov.uk/planning/strategic-planning/docs/Carbon-Neutral-Action-Plan.pdf - TLCIC are use this to reduce our own Co2 emissions.”
SARA So all our centres are costing a fortune to run. Are we burning gas to heat them all?
KEVIN “Yes, at the moment almost all our heating is via gas. Behind the scenes, things are changing. Central government set up the public sector decarbonisation scheme (PSDS), essentially a huge pot of money for local authorities like TC to apply for whatever projects they are prioritising on.”
