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September 2023

This page relates to non-domestic buildings, for domestic, see Social Housing case study SSN page.

Examples of energy efficiency improvements and decarbonised heating installation projects are shown below:

  • East Ayrshire Council: The St. Sophia’s Primary School aims to be the first school in the UK to achieve EnerPHit certification.
  • City of Edinburgh Council: A pilot ‘EnerPHit Informed Retrofit Plan’ aims to inform its approach to 400 non-residential buildings in its estate and offers potential lessons for other local authorities.
  • The Highlands Council: Opened a £7 million Recycling Fund with Salix to reduce carbon emissions and install a wide range of energy efficiency upgrades. The council have taken an estate-wide approach, with the first phase of works focusing on how education and leisure estates can be upgraded. Large scale LED lighting and Solar PV projects have also been rolled out across the council’s school estate. Improvements to existing sites were made to prepare for the installation of renewable onsite generation.
  • The NHS: The NHS Climate Change and Sustainability Strategy has set targets to use renewable heating systems by 2038 for all NHS-owned buildings, and for all our estate to have net-zero emissions by 2040 or earlier where possible. They plan to reduce their energy consumption through efficiency measures (set out in Annex A of the strategy) and replace fossil fuel heating with renewable heat sources and electricity. As well as undertaken Building Management System (BMS) improvements, energy management and sub-metering. A flagship example is the NHS Orkney Balfour Hospital. 
  • NHS Orkney Balfour Hospital operates as an all-electric acute services healthcare facility. Heating and hot water needs are provided by twin air source heat pumps with a high efficiency oil-fired boiler plant for emergency backup and to ease operational spikes. Other measures include an array of solar photovoltaic cells, low energy LED lighting and high frequency low loss fluorescent sources for clinical areas. Lighting control software manages demand according to occupancy levels. The building fabric and components all contribute to reduced energy demand due to insulation properties, high construction standards and thermal efficiencies.
  • The University of Strathclyde: Opened their Recycling Fund in 2009 and since then they have invested over £3.3 million of Salix funding and completed over 30 energy efficiency projects to begin creating a pathway to a carbon neutral estate. Their Recycling Fund has enabled them to complete various energy efficiency projects ranging from pipework insulation to upgrading fume cupboards. One of their most recent projects saw an investment of £1 million as part of upgrades to the university’s main data centre, consisting of cooling optimization and a server replacement.
  • Glasgow City Council: The Burrell Collection renovation design incorporates the installation of energy efficiency measures to improve thermal efficiency such as specialist glass, significantly improved roof insulation, and improved air permeability ensuring that heat loss is greatly reduced.
  • City of Edinburgh Council: Saughton Park, part of the ParkPower programme, is Scotland’s first green-powered park. By combining a micro-hydro scheme to generate electricity and ground source heat pumps to generate heat it utilises its natural assets in a sensitive way to decarbonise its energy demand.
  • A list of capital projects supported under Low Carbon Infrastructure Transition Programme (2015-2021) as of June 2022 can be found here.