Witney News - District Council gets green light for energy savings

District Council gets green light for energy savings

West Oxfordshire District Council has made giant strides towards becoming an environmental leader after energy saving initiatives have seen their carbon footprint drop for the third consecutive year.

The Council’s environmental strategy has contributed to carbon and money savings and it has now achieved a reduction of more than 15 per cent in its overall greenhouse gas emissions since 2009.

This has been a very productive year for the council with winning the annual fleet hero awards for best public sector fleet and making huge CO2 savings throughout the council.

Cllr David Harvey, Cabinet Member for Environment, said: “As a local authority, we have a vital role to play in improving energy efficiency in the district. It’s great to have made such huge reductions and testament to staff who have helped to make a real difference through simple things like turning lights off and appliances when not in use.”

Energy savings initiatives include:
* Using environmentally friendly vehicles and the installation of SMART meters, which monitor energy use, in its offices.
* May Gurney, the West Oxfordshire waste contractor, fitting a cardboard compactor to its vehicles, which allows them to collect more recyclable waste during collections. This is in addition to new fuel efficient vehicles being used to collect recycling.
* Improvements to the fleet vehicle operations have contributed to a reduction of around 24 per cent (on last year) in fuel consumption.
* Using replacement vehicles, which are around 10 per cent more efficient - they have also been trialling electric vehicles to further reduce greenhouse emissions.
* Energy savings have also been accomplished at the council-owned Windrush Leisure Centre, improvements were made to the lighting system, including installing PIR presence sensors to turn off lights in unattended rooms that made CO2 savings of more than eight tonnes.