Helping a regional park headquarters and a high school in London hit ambitious emission reduction targets

 

Understand - Competing to succeed

 

Many organisations want to be ‘sustainable’, but few have the resources to make it happen. The Forestry Commission, as part of their woodfuel supply chain programme, tasked Lantern to identify and provide support to two London sites considering the replacement of their existing heating systems.

 

Our approach was to run a competition across London to identify organisations interested in small to medium scale biomass heating. After considering all the entrants carefully, Lee Valley Regional Park (LVRP) and Croydon Council – specifically Archbishop Tenison’s CE High School – were selected to receive support.

 

Deliver - Targeted assessments and recommendations

 

Both LVRP and Croydon Council had shown a genuine ambition to switch from fossil fueled boilers, which were incurring high fuel costs and CO2 emissions, to lower carbon, more efficient heating systems. Our task was to conduct site assessments and make recommendations to turn their ambitions into reality.

 

LVRP were already successfully using ground source heat pumps in their visitor centre and museum. Now they wanted to discover if energy systems and consumption could be improved at the park authorities HQ, Myddelton House, a listed building. To this end, Lantern carried out a comprehensive techno-economic assessment of energy efficiency measures and biomass boiler and woodfuel options.

 

A desk-based assessment of Croydon’s off-gas schools identified Archbishop Tenison’s CE High School as a potential site for a biomass boiler. We assessed energy consumption at the school and presented four scenarios for using biomass heating. Two of these included a 10% reduction in energy consumption through energy efficiency measures. 

 

Evaluate - Making it happen

 

Based on our findings and recommendations, LVRP has started the procurement process to install a wood pellet boiler and upgrade the distribution system to supply both heating and hot water throughout the building.

 

Archbishop Tenison’s CE High School now understands the cost and emissions savings available by replacing the oil boilers with a biomass system. This will enable the school and council to make an informed decision on the boiler and fuel they choose when the current boilers are replaced in the near future.