GoGreen Week and IOCT

Online totaliser day view for GoGreen week

Well...inspite of our major contribution to the new Greenview App,  the University GoGreen week ( http://gogreenweek.dmu.ac.uk/) passed unevenly, with IOCT down in the energy league tables because of its relatively small size-where any small discrepancy in use was magnified disproportionately-hence the turning off of a few items on standby leading to a 28% saving for the day. Hence this tweet!

"@greenviewdmu Greenview

Also huge congratulations to @ioct_dmu who, after a visit by dmu energy team, reduced consumption by 28%!! @ahugill #dmugogreen"

The Vice Chancellor writes as follows:

Staff and students cut electricity use by 12.3 per cent in one week.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone at DMU for doing their bit to make Go Green Week such a success.

The final figure shows we managed to reduce our electricity consumption by 12.3 per cent across the campus, which was a huge saving of 30,871kWh – all in the space of seven days.

To put it into context, the energy saved would be enough to power nine homes for a year, or toast more than a million slices of bread! We also saved more than 16 tonnes of carbon dioxide!

It was a fantastic effort which shows the big savings that can be achieved by following a few simple steps to make sure computers, lighting and other electrical equipment are switched off when we are not using them.

I don’t think any institution of our size has ever attempted such a campaign and it reflects the importance DMU puts on environmental issues and sustainability.

It was also a fitting tribute to our 14 Japanese students from Tohoku University, who were visiting De Montfort University (DMU) for a week’s holiday as they continued to rebuild their lives following the earthquake and tsunami in March this year.

When I invited them to stay at DMU I wanted to do something to show our solidarity with the Japanese victims of the earthquake. Reducing electricity consumption seemed a simple but effective thing to do and help us remember how they are  having to cope with drastically cutting energy use after major power plants were destroyed.

We have learned a lot from Go Green Week – but please remember our drive to save energy does not stop here.

We all have a part to play in reducing electricity consumption and cutting carbon emissions on campus.

There are lots of opportunities to do this, including taking part in the Green Impact project which is a competition between departments and teams to see who can be the greenest. For more information on Green Impact please contact me  kletten@dmu.ac.uk

For more information about the green initiatives happening at DMU please visit www.dmu.ac.uk/sustainability

Thank you again - and let’s keep saving energy.

Professor Dominic Shellard

Vice-Chancellor of DMU