LEAF – analysis of properties in Brighton & Hove

alexhunt Bright Green News, News

Leaf SAP results

the white columns show where the homes start – and red shows where they can finish on the EPC A-G rating for energy efficiency

You can see some fantastically interesting results from the Local Energy Assessment Fund (LEAF) project that we were involved with, with The Green Building Partnership in the Spring of 2012.

visit – The Green Building Partnership for further info

The overall figures show that by following the advice contained in the Green Building Partnership reports the properties we visited in the Hanover, Hollingbury & Portslade areas of Brighton & Hove could collectively reduce their carbon emissions by 46%.

To quote from the GBP website (its ok – I’m not plagiarising – I wrote that too!):

“This is equivalent to a reduction in CO2 per house of over 2.2 tons, equivalent to 335 tons across 150 properties every year.

If we use this as an example of how to go about this in properties in Brighton & Hove  and extrapolated this figure across all 125,000 properties in the City we could reduce our emissions by 275,000 tons of CO2 per year!

One tonne of CO2 weighs as much as 10 baby elephants and would fill a swimming pool 10m wide, 25m long and 2m deep. So, 275,000 tons? That’s a lot of baby elephants?!”

But to add to this and give you another way of looking at it – how much money does that save?

 

On average UK homes (in homes with Gas) use Gas for 90% of their energy consumption and Electricity for 10%

energy consumption

If there are 0.537kg of CO2 produced in the UK for every 1kWh of electricity used and 0.185kg of CO2 for each kWh of Gas then the consumption of energy (in kWh) to create 275,000 tons would be:

(275,000 x 90%) =247,500 tons = 247,500,000 kg

247,500,000 / 0.185 = 1,337,837,838 kWh per year of Gas.

(275,000 x 10%) = 27,500 tons = 27,500,000 kg

27,500,000 / 0.537 = 5,121,043 kWh of Electricity

 

And if we then look at the average cost of electricity/gas in the UK:

£0.049/kWh for Gas & £0.139/kWh for electricity. This therefore means that the residents of Brighton & Hove could save £66,265,879 per year!!

That is over £66million of money in the city not spent on Gas and Electricity every year – I’m sure you would agree that this is a phenomenal number?

Imagine all that money flowing into the area to be spent on other goods and services? And the upside is that we are also doing our part to improve our environment? A win win?