10:10:10

Today is 10:10:10 - 10th October 2010 - a day designated by the 10:10 campaign, in partnership with the international campaign group 350.org, as 'a global day of doing'. We're not doing anything specific for this day, but instead here is an update on our own 10:10 project from Philip:

Last Autumn, the director of the climate change film “The Age of Stupid”, Franny Armstrong, invited governments, organisations and individuals to sign up for the 10:10 challenge: to cut their emissions of carbon dioxide by 10% during 2010. The Church signed up to the challenge with the aim of reducing emissions by decreasing the amount of energy we use to light and heat the premises. Obviously, reducing our energy use also has the added benefit of lowering costs.

Firstly, we worked out how much electricity we used in a year, using the meter readings taken in September 2008 and September 2009. From this, the quantity of carbon dioxide that was emitted in producing this amount of electricity was calculated. After reducing this figure by 10%,our target for 2010 was obtained: a maximum of 9852 kg of carbon dioxide.

The redevelopment project included the installation of gas boilers to provide much of the heating, which give off less carbon dioxide for the same amount of heat and should therefore work in our favour.

Since the building work should have been finished by the end of March, it was decided to run the “year” from April 2010 to March 2011. We are monitoring energy each month to see how we are doing.

Because we have not used gas before, we have had to estimate the quantities of gas and electricity we will use. Obviously, we use less energy in summer months than in winter months, so to allow us to monitor progress, we have estimated the proportion of energy used each month. These figures range from 3% of the total in each summer month to 15% per month in the winter.

Unfortunately, we missed the targets in April and May because of the continuing building work but since then we have been just below target. The real challenge comes with the darker and colder months ahead – and we will need everyone’s help. Simple things like not leaving external doors open and not leaving lights and heaters on when they are not needed could make a significant difference to our progress.

We are reporting results every month on the church notice board, and hope this will encourage church members to do what they can to help us continue to meet our goals.