Climate change is at the forefront of everyone’s minds, especially in light of the recent demonstrations in London and Greta Thunberg’s visit to parliament. We all have a responsibility to reduce our carbon footprint and save our planet.
An excellent example is at Swansea, where Freedom Leisure, Swansea Council’s leisure operator, have begun to implement a programme of energy saving measures to reduce the carbon footprint across several of the leisure centres within their contract.
As a result they have given the go ahead for their energy saving partner, Leisure Energy, to install green technologies and systems within the facilities.
Energy savings are estimated to reduce carbon emissions across the facilities by nearly 500 tonnes per year. This is equivalent to taking 100 cars off the road or saving the entire energy use of an average house for almost 40 years!
One of the examples of their energy saving measures is the installation of solar photovoltaic panels on the roof at Morriston Leisure Centre which has already been completed, and they are generating their own electricity. After the first month of operation valuable savings are already being realised equivalent to 400 hours of usage of an LCD TV.
Additionally, the mounting of solar thermal panels at Penlan Leisure Centre allows the circulation of pool water to be directly warmed by the sun. This is an “emission free” source of energy for heating the swimming pools saving approximately 10 tonnes of carbon per annum.
Other works across the facilities include new and efficient air handling units at Penlan and Penyrheol Leisure Centres, replacing existing light fittings with LED lamps at The LC, Morriston and Penlan and high velocity low flow showers at The LC. All of these will contribute to the overall carbon reduction programme.
The full extent of the schedule of works will be completed towards the end of 2019.
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