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Environmental Highlights 2024

We have continued to make strides towards meeting our ambition of reducing our carbon footprint to net zero by 2030 and this was recognised at the national Club Mirror awards when we won the Green and Sustainable Club of the year trophy for 2024. This recognised a number of projects completed by the Club including:

◊ the various works headed by Peter Bradburn and the grounds teams to reduce our environmental impact in terms of water use, fertiliser use, sand use in the bunkers, composting and re-use of green and food waste … and a whole host of other initiatives.

◊ the complete electrification of all kitchen systems thereby reducing our gas consumption to zero.

◊ the first full year of running our solar panel arrays.

We endeavour to ensure that our environmental projects not only reduce our carbon footprint but also enhance our Members’ experience and/or produce long term operational cost savings for the Club. By introducing much greater monitoring and more detailed measuring equipment, particularly on our electricity and water consumption, we are not only able to manage our usage more effectively but also recognise systems issues much sooner and put mitigation into place more quickly. As an example, of our work, I’d like to consider, in more detail, our solar project.

In our first full year of operation, our solar arrays produced just over 359,000kWh of electricity. The graph demonstrates how this is distributed over the year.

 

During 2024, we had already negotiated a very good deal for our electricity from the Grid. While most were paying around 30p/kWh, with our 3-year deal which ended in September 2024, we contracted to buy at a rate of 17.4p/kWh – almost half price! But, of course, our solar arrays produced electricity and we used this first before going to the Grid to top up to meet our demand; the cost saving, despite our ability to purchase low-cost electricity, was around £60,000.

 

We all understand the value of money but what does 359,000kWh mean?

◊ If we think about the amount of time we could leave a single bar (1kW) electric fire on all the time, then it’s almost 41years!
◊ In an electric vehicle its enough power to drive more than one and a quarter MILLION miles or over 50 times round the earth.
◊ It would heat 36 homes for a year.
◊ You could produce 850 tons of steel in an arc furnace.
◊ It could produce enough water via desalination to supply drinking water to 450,000 people for a year.

It’s a significant amount of power. So what does it do for the Environment? If we used power from the Grid we would be party to the CO2 ‘costs’ of producing that power. It is fair to say that the Grid is getting greener as we move away from fossil fuels. Last year the UK closed the last coal fired power station. Coal is a very polluting power source where between 800 and 1000 grams of CO2 are released for each kilowatt hour of energy produced. Gas fired power stations are much less polluting and emit 350-400g/kWh but wind and solar produce no emissions at the point of production. In 2024, for the first time, renewables produced over half of the UK’s electricity and as a consequence Grid power was the cleanest its ever been at an average of 124g/kWh. Our solar panels are emission free at the point of production and so the 360,000 kWh we generated saved the Grid from producing 44,640 metric TONNES of CO2. Again, what does this mean in terms we understand a little better?

◊ This amount of CO2 would fill over 9,000 swimming pools.
◊ It’s the amount of CO2 sequestered from the atmosphere in a year by 2 million average mature trees.

We are continuing to investigate means by which we can reduce our carbon footprint. We are considering a solar carport over the car park, replacement of the gas and diesel air handling units for the tennis bubbles and the ITC, replacement of the gas heating systems for the Clubhouse and Health Club and many other projects but always with the view that as well as reducing our carbon footprint we ensure that the projects pay back in a reasonable time and wherever possible also enhance the member experience.

David Burditt