Holyrood in plan to save energy

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/scotland/7159869.stm

Version 0 of 1.

Andrew Black Political reporter, BBC Scotland news website We are all being asked to do our bit to help the environment and, at the Scottish Parliament, they have taken it one step further.

Environmentalists say Holyrood should lead by example

Holyrood management have set ambitious targets to cut energy consumption and, to help them, they have started issuing MSPs and staff who neglect to turn their computers off at the end of the day with an electronic slap on the wrists.

Up to 1,000 people work in the building in Edinburgh and not many spend the day without logging on to a computer.

As climate change climbs the political agenda, bosses hit upon a novel idea to cut the amount of wasted electricity.

Under the new system, those who leave their computers on overnight are greeted with an e-mail the next morning asking them not to do so again.

Alex Johnstone, a member of the Scottish Parliament's management team said he hoped the tactic would help achieve an 8% cut in energy consumption by March 2009.

Bosses are on course to achieve the target - but by a narrow margin.

Mr Johnstone said: "The contribution this makes will be very small.

Campaigners argue that thermal imaging is a useful guide

"But the trick, when it comes to saving energy, is to actually make sure that you do every little thing you can and the parliament is doing its part to make sure it makes progress."

Environmentalists have given the ethos a warm welcome but say there is still more to be done.

Green MSP Robin Harper said there was a responsibility on all those running public buildings to ensure they were energy efficient.

He said: "Recently I campaigned against Midlothian Council leaving all the lights on in the old Dalkeith High School, in order to deter burglars.

"It wasn't so much the cost - it might have been a fairly effective way of doing it - it was the example that it was setting to everybody in the area, particularly children, that it's alright to leave your lights on. We shouldn't accept that."

Green groups are never short of a gimmick to claim that managers in buildings like the Scottish Parliament do not practice what they preach.

Methods, such as the use of thermal images which claim to show unnecessary heat loss, have been welcomed by some as a good indicator of what needs to be done to make improvements.

'Heat leak'

Others have argued that the best way to cut energy waste is by setting cold, hard targets.

Mr Harper added: "A well-managed building that's poorly constructed and insulated can be managed well. A very well constructed building, if it's managed badly, will leak just as much heat.

"What we want to look at for the Scottish Parliament is the actual figures - how much heat have we used over the year?"

It is not just electricity waste that the parliament hopes to address.

Bosses are on track to exceed their aspiration of reducing landfill waste by half next year and say a drive to cut paper use has also been yielding results.

It is part of their other goal to help set an example on green issues that the whole nation can follow.