Confidence in the business case

With an estate of more than 300 buildings of all sizes, from substantial flagship council premises to small rural schools, recording a 40 per cent cut in carbon over five years is no mean feat. But that is what Wendi Wheeler, energy manager for Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council, is on track to hit. It’s an achievement that has earned her this year’s ESTA Energy Manager of the Year.

Underpinning that reduction has been a £3.5m investment in energy efficiency by the local authority. In an era of austerity, such a move represents a notable degree of confidence in the business case put forward. For Wheeler, the key was the detailed nature of that proposal. “It was vital to build a strong and realistic business case,” she recalls. “We were asking for a significant amount of money and we had to justify that proposal as there are many other calls on the council’s funds.

“The clincher,” she adds, “was the evidence we produced to show that over five years, that investment would produce savings of £12.8m. This convinced both the council’s cabinet and the finance director that this programme would help the authority both economically and environmentally. At Redcar and Cleveland, energy is now recognised as a controllable cost.”

And the evidence shows that confidence was well placed. Careful monitoring and analysis has demonstrated that the programme is on target to meet its objectives. “Being able to provide the evidence that the proposals really are stacking up has enabled us to move to the next stage,” says Wheeler. “We now have authorisation to ‘re-base’ our energy performance and draw up a further plan to take our energy management programme through to 2020,” she adds. “When I presented the analysis and broached the idea of extending the programme to the director who sponsors the programme, he told me that I was ‘pushing at an open door’. That’s a great vote of confidence in the work of the energy team.”

Wheeler manages a team of eight. When she began work at the council in the maintenance office after leaving school, there was not much of a focus on energy. But when an energy manager was appointed she became an energy assistant and gradually worked up until in 2008 she took over the role of energy manager. She has developed and directed the borough council’s successful campaign on carbon emissions.

“Our focus has been on carbon reduction,” she notes. “And we have introduced a range of programmes and activities across a very diverse portfolio. For example, we do a great deal of work with schools, helping them to reduce their own emissions. We engage with the children as well, through different activities and at school assemblies. In that way, we are helping to educate the energy consumers of the future. We offer a fully structured Low Carbon Schools Programme developed in association with the Carbon Trust.”

The borough’s Energy Management Team runs a central monitoring and targeting system which covers all the major buildings and all utility bills come to the central office. The team attends to the full range of energy tasks, from bill checking and processing, reviewing insulation levels, lighting controls, BEMS upgrades, and voltage optimisation. In collaboration with colleagues from all across the organisation, the team encourages and enables projects such as heating system replacement, newer technologies like biomass boilers, and improving fuel efficiency on the council’s transport fleet. In all, it is leading on 165 different projects.

The variety of projects and programmes is one of the main attractions of the energy manager’s role for Wheeler. “One day I can be helping someone whose heating system has broken down and the next it could be working with a group of children to teach them about energy and climate change,” she says. “It’s also very satisfying to be able to see and measure the difference that our interventions make. Being able to quantify the effects of our work is very important to the energy management team at Redcar & Cleveland.”

For the future? “I think energy management is going to become increasingly important as we in this country – and further afield – attempt to create a low carbon, sustainable future,” says Wheeler. “We need to make people, whether senior managers, fellow staff or stakeholders, aware that energy consumption can be managed; it’s not just a regular bill that has to be paid come what may.

“Equally, energy – and carbon – form a core part of a wider sustainability agenda. I think that my role may well broaden over the next few years!”

• Wendi Wheeler received the 2013 ESTA Energy Manager of the Year Award at a gala dinner during the Sustainabilitylive! event on 16 April. The Energy Services and Technology Association (ESTA) represents over 100 major providers of energy management equipment and services across the UK. For more details visit the website at: www.esta.org.uk