Oxfordshire County Council partnered with LCMB to help create a decarbonisation strategy for the local authority’s buildings estate and helped support public sector decarbonisation grant applications.
These alternative sustainable recommendations provided Oxfordshire County Council with a plan that was in line with their ambitious net zero 2030 target.
Oxfordshire County Council (OCC) are the local authority for Oxfordshire, delivering services across the county for over 600,000 residents. In line with an ambitious net zero 2030 target, the Property team were responsible for managing and implementing a decarbonisation strategy for their real estate, which includes offices, schools, libraries and other facilities across the county.
With limited resource and knowledge in-house, a large and complex real estate and pressure to obtain essential decarbonisation grant funding, OCC required the knowledge and experience of the LCMB consultancy team, to assess, create and deliver a decarbonisation plan.
LCMB firstly had to audit the existing heating and energy consumption in each estate building. This analysed usage and energy requirements of each building, such as building occupation rates and existing heating system in place, before making a recommendation for the most suitable heating solution.
An example of this is the replacement of the heating solution in a Fire Station, where the building was being heated for many more hours a week than occupation required. Instead of replacing the gas heating system with an air source pump, based on the Fire Station requirements, an infrared heating solution was the recommendation.
This detailed analysis and recommendation was delivered across the entire OCC building estate.
This individual analysis across the entire building estate, ensured that OCC has complete visibility of their estate landscape and provided a wider decarbonisation programme where both energy and cost efficiencies could be achieved through the delivery of renewable and sustainable solutions. This in turn provided OCC with the detailed data and information required to secure much needed grant funds for implementation.
LCMB also highlighted potential areas to assist OCC to offset carbon, such as small-scale solar farms, which would help them achieve their 2030 net zero target.