Donegal County Council (Ireland) is making great efforts regarding energy awareness between the staff working in the public buildings and the citizens living in the region. Their latest campaign aims to complement the Councils new Energy Management System to achieve continuous energy performance improvement throughout all its organisational operations.

Joe Peoples Director of Corporate, Housing & Culture with Donegal County Council who chairs the internal Energy Management Team, states that “the Energy Awareness Campaign is about giving staff information about energy, the importance of conserving it and advising on simple ways to save energy both at work and at home”. According to Peoples, this initiative is an important part of their Energy Management approach where they have set out the Council’s policy in relation to energy. They have also put in place objectives and targets for energy performance improvement over the next number of years. “We have identified a number of Significant Energy Users or SEU’s within the organisation including Public Lighting, our Offices and Cultural Services Buildings, Fire Stations, Landfill sites and our Transport Fleet”.

 

Through this energy awareness campaign, our SECURE partner wants to identify opportunities for improving energy performance. “We have conducted energy assessments on a number of buildings and we are putting in mechanisms to monitor consumption and this data will be analysed regularly and used to develop performance indicators”, continues McLaughlin.  

 

Chief Executive Seamus Neely believes that staff engagement is an important step within the context of meeting the energy efficiency targets set at national level. “This campaign is an important part of the Councils energy management system and the Council is continuously striving to deliver savings and efficiencies in energy consumption. This initiative is important if we are to achieve our targets of a 33% reduction in energy use by 2020. I am delighted to see the Council leading out on this initiative as it will no doubt be an exemplar for other businesses both in the public and private sector”.

 

Our SECURE partner has delivered a series of activities as part of this campaign including Staff Energy Information Roadshows in each of their offices including the very popular Bike Watt Challenge where staff got the opportunity to see how much energy could they produce through pedal power and show off their levels of fitness at the same time. They also held the Best Staff Energy Saving Idea Competition and the lucky winner won an IPad and had an opportunity to see their idea implemented.  Other initiatives included Energy Saving Tip of the Week and a Driver Awareness Campaign.