ENERGY

Overview 

We urgently need to cut the emissions from our buildings’ energy use. That may sometimes be a financial challenge, but plenty of support is available to work out what each building needs, put in place easy wins, and plan for more major works. The main categories of action here are:

• Improving the fabric of buildings to require less heating, cooling and lighting. 

• Increasing the efficiency of equipment, especially climate control in galleries and museums.

• Installing lower-carbon sources of energy, such as solar panels and heat pumps.

Headline actions

Reducing the amount of energy needed to heat and cool a building should be a top priority. That means insulating roofs and walls, double-glazing windows, and protecting entrances with draft lobbies, so the building loses less heat. It also means thinking about ventilation, air flow, and the careful management of direct sunlight to minimise the amount of artificial cooling needed during hotter months.

The next priority is to go through everything in the building that uses energy: heating, cooling and ventilation, lighting, lifts, catering equipment etc. Over time, all will need replacing with new, more efficient equipment. In the short term, you can reduce how much energy the building uses with more advanced controls that switch off lights and heating when rooms are empty and turn down heating and aircon.

A particular focus for many galleries and museums will be the energy used for climate control in spaces that contain artworks. See here for more detailed advice on this topic. 

A third important action is finding opportunities to generate renewable energy through the building itself. This could include photovoltaic (PV) solar panels (the type that generates electricity), solar hot water, or heat pumps (air source or ground source). In most cases, these kinds of technology are more efficient on a larger scale, so consider whether a joint installation with others in your local community might be feasible.

You can't do everything at once

If you rent your building, it may not be down to you to carry out major building works at all – making these things happen are likely to require long-term negotiation with your landlord.

Whether or not you are in direct control of these works, it can be helpful to divide them into categories:

1. ‘Easy Wins’ might include cheap insulation in lofts or on hot water pipes, blocking up drafts, or putting thermostats on radiators.
2. ‘Maintenance works’ are the sort of improvements you can put into an annual maintenance budget.
3. ‘Capital Projects’ will only apply if you own the building, or operate it on a long lease. They might include re-roofing with better insulation, replacing gas boilers with heat pumps, or fitting PV panels. Such projects will be expensive, and may need planning, listed building or landlord’s consents. You can read more detailed advice on this here.

In many cases, grants or interest-free loans may be available for these kinds of improvements. Ask your local authority, or local energy-saving charities, for advice on this.

If you’ve measured your carbon emissions using GCC’s carbon calculator, you should already have an idea as to which types of energy (electricity, piped gas, heating oil etc) are contributing the most to your carbon footprint. You probably already have a good idea of what they’re adding to your annual financial costs.

Check if any local charities, companies or public authorities offer a building energy audit. If you find a reputable provider that you can afford, this is probably the best way to identify the main opportunities for short, medium and long-term improvements in your building’s fabric.

If you aren’t able to do this right now, then the Theatre Green Book contains a ‘Home Survey tool’ that can help you get started. You fill in simple details about your building, and it generates an initial sustainability plan. The plan will suggest what’s likely to be appropriate for your building. The suggestions will be listed in order of impact so you know you’re getting the best outcome for your investment. In times of increasing energy costs, that also means savings for your organisation.

You can also find detailed advice on energy saving in different kinds of buildings from Ki Culture,  Historic England, the Sustainable Traditional Buildings Alliance, and the Royal Institute of British Architects. 

What about switching to a green electricity tariff?

While switching to a more environmentally responsible energy supplier is a positive thing to do, it won’t have an immediate impact on your organisation’s carbon footprint, despite the claims made by some energy companies. We all receive the same mix of electricity from our national/regional energy grid, regardless of our choice of energy company or tariff. Directing your energy bills towards companies that are building new renewable generation, rather than propping up fossil fuels, should help to make the electricity grid greener in the long term but it won’t reduce your carbon footprint today, and so changing electricity supplier should not be seen as a replacement for any of the actions above. See GCC’s special report on green tariffs for more information and advice about this.

What if I rent my building?

Many museums, galleries, art studios and other art sector buildings operate a mixture of owned and rented spaces, the latter often on short-term leases, making long-term sustainability planning difficult. If this is the case for you, below is some advice:

• Try to negotiate shared responsibility for energy use between landlord and tenant. Ideally, the landlord would include heating within your rent (and therefore take responsibility for improvements to the building – which they control), while you pay the electricity bill (and therefore take responsibility for improvements to your operations – which you control).

• Use simple principles to reduce your energy consumption such as: turning the heating down and ensuring it’s off when the building is unoccupied; making sure lighting is only on when and where needed; turning electrical equipment off instead of to standby; and avoiding or minimising the use of electric fan heaters.

• If you are a landlord, meter each workspace locally, so as to identify each tenant’s energy use and incentivise improvements.

• Before signing a new short-term lease, ask some of the following questions to encourage the landlord to think about sustainability:

• Can I have an estimate for the typical cost of energy? Do you have any plans to improve the building to reduce these costs?

• Are there any lighting sensors to automatically turn them off so we can save some energy?

• Does the heating run on gas or oil? Do you have plans to shift to a heat pump and/or solar heating?

• Are you procuring electricity from a green supplier? Could this be possible?

• If you’re fitting out a rented ‘shell’, the following fit-out system has been developed as sustainable, freely accessible and affordable: Space Form Space 

Effective Actions

• Carry out an energy audit, either with a trusted local practitioner or using the Theatre Green Book Home Survey Tool.

• If you have art exhibition or storage spaces with strict climate control, check out our specific guidance on this topic.

• Draught-proofing windows and doors is a relatively low-cost way of reducing energy loss.

• Install smart heating controls, so you’re only heating spaces while they are being actively used.

• Install movement detectors and daylight sensors on your lighting, so you’re only lighting spaces when needed.

• Put hot water flow restrictors on hot taps.

• Switch lighting to LED.

• Control ventilation of large spaces with carbon monoxide detectors, so the ventilation only comes on when required.

• If you have a Building Management System, get some training to make sure you’re using it as effectively as possible. Upgrade it if you can.

• Install insulation on hot water pipework.

• Fit draught lobbies or heat curtains on all entrances.

• Get advice on whether your building could be appropriate for solar panels, solar heating, solar hot water or ground-source/air-source heat pumps. Consider whether this could be done in partnership with other local buildings.

• Investigate what grants, loans or other support might be available to support all of the above.

• Consider switching to a more environmentally responsible energy supplier (but read our guidance on this topic first)