Most definitely Yes!

Anyone locally will immediately point out our white tall floodlights. What some people have not yet realised is, whereas in years gone past they would be switched on for about 3400 hours per year, we have cut down their usage to no more than 800 hours per year. - a reduction of over 75%. Remember also we are a day and boarding school. We have 500 children who live on the Estate for at least 34 weeks of the year. During the dark winter evenings they still need to play rugby matches, exercise their horses, for the Combined Cadet force (CCF) to practice and operate and to generally be safely allowed outside to play, enjoy fresh air and have fun. 100 acres is a big area to "police" and whereas our pupils are generally well behaved we still need to ensure they are not being naughty. So our white lights stick in people’s minds but not only have we reduced their usage by 75% we are doing a myriad of other things to reduce our carbon footprint and make for a healthier lifestyle...

All boilers are scheduled to be replaced with boilers using secondary burners and are all classed as exceptional high efficiency boilers. We are well on with this replacement program. Our new boilers are up to 40% more efficient and less polluting than the boilers we suspect you will find in other schools in the region.

We have a program of replacing all light bulbs (and fittings if necessary) with high efficiency, low wattage bulbs. We are achieving amazing savings and we believe our energy usage will soon fall per pupil. For example Abbey Chambers - a large boarding house capable of housing up to 200 pupils, will only now consume 3,000 watts of power if every single light was on!

Lighting wise the process of replacing conventional light bulbs with compact low energy lamps, means a fifth of the price to run and heat dissipation is about a tenth so things like air con are not needed as much for cooling. Lamp life of low energy is 10-15,000 hours compared to 1-2,000 hours for normal lamps. We are now even testing the use of LED lights where the bulb is only 1 watt each and they can last up to 50,000 hours. We are trialling this in our Woodlands building.

External lighting - we are using compact low energy for wall lights, car parks high pressure sodium's double the output but half the cost to run. Car parks are wired so only 50% are working after 11pm.

All outside lighting has digital time clocks, as opposed to analogue, so can be programmed to turn off at given times and are now being all overlaid with light sensors.

All white goods fitted into rooms are A rated (shortly to be upgraded to AAA) for energy efficiency and T.V off timers fitted to maximise energy efficiency.

A BMS system is being fitted at the Genesis centre so things like heating, water, room temperatures etc, can all be controlled remotely and automatically programmed by computer to turn off when not occupied / needed.

We are currently looking into CPH on generators to see if it is viable for us - this relates to total heat recovery. Thus for example we consider it is possible to not only heat the new swimming pool in the Genesis Centre but possibly the whole building, off the spare and waste "heat" given off by our nearby super silent, high efficiency generators.

We are currently in the middle of replacing all 500 computers on the Estate with ones that consume only one third of the electricity of the previous models.