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Faculty of Science and Engineering

Switch-off weekend in MECD (Friday 22 - Sunday, 24 November)

12 Nov 2024

Colleagues across MECD buildings are asked to switch-off non-essential electrical items to help us demonstrate how much energy we can save

Our University is committed to becoming zero carbon by 2038 and one way we can help to achieve this is by switching off non-essential electrical items.

Over the festive period, the University sees a reduction of 25% in energy usage (equating to a cost saving of £150,000) but these savings could be even greater if we begin to embed these ‘switch-off’ habits throughout the year. 

That’s why, on Friday 22 November, we’re inviting colleagues across MECD to take part in “Switch-off weekend” - a campus-wide push to demonstrate how much energy we can save by shutting down non-essential items for a single weekend.

How to take part

There’s a number of ways MECD buildings have been designed to conserve energy, from automated workspace lighting to regulated heating systems, but there’s still a number of small, easy actions we can all take to help make a big difference.

Workspace

Whether you’re leaving work on Friday or earlier in the week and know your equipment won’t be used by anybody else, please consider switching off the following:

  • Desktop monitors (unless you require remote access from elsewhere)
  • Personal kitchen appliances (e.g. coffee machines, sandwich makers
  • Localised (not managed by Estates) air conditioning UNITS and fans

Laboratory spaces

Whilst a number of experiments and safety/monitoring equipment need to run over weekends, laboratories are some of our most energy intensive environments.

You should always check with your space’s Technical Lead before switching off equipment but where this has been approved and will not interfere with business activity, please consider:

  • Powering down lab equipment
  • Switching off any unneeded office equipment in your lab and manual lighting
  • Closing your fume hood sash (often the largest consumers of energy)

Next steps

Following “Switch-off weekend”, colleagues in Henry Royce Institute will be crunching the numbers and reporting back how much energy was saved across the weekend, both as an institution and on a building-by-building basis.