Our Story

Climate change is everyone’s business. It is also our business. Our mission is to promote the development of resilient, accessible, low-cost energy networks globally, accelerating the transition to energy decarbonisation. We educate and facilitate the introduction of low carbon technologies and work collaboratively with regulators, organisations and partners to manage the effects of climate change. We make it our business to deliver innovative solutions to operators of power networks globally as well as helping accelerate progress towards clean growth, adaptation and resilience of energy networks.

We have pledged to completely decarbonise our 1950’s headquarters building and continue to invest in this with the aim of making it net zero with features including EV charging points, solar PV panels on the roof, a low-carbon heating system, LED lighting, and an energy storage facility.

We are openly sharing our decarbonisation journey, documenting it as a blueprint, paving the way for others to adopt as they look to embark on their decarbonisation journey and retrofit their own legacy buildings.

The Challenge

Our building decarbonisation plan has faced challenges, some of which were completely unpredictable. The pandemic made us pause and rethink how we use our building and reassess our priorities for it, including a blockage in the Suez Canal that delayed the arrival of our new battery system . . . to name but a few.

Extensive research and data gathering is essential to get a good understanding of the building your in and to focus on specific areas that need the most work. Think about how much energy the building uses, does it change by day and night or weekday or weekend? How is that split by different processes and loads like heating and lighting? Also, what is the operational ‘base load’ for essential equipment? These questions gave us a greater understanding of the work that needed to be done and how it could be done most effectively.

Secondly, it’s important to consider how the use of the building may change over time. It may be as fundamental as whether you will still be in the same building in ten years. This is something that the pandemic made very obvious to us when it accelerated subtle changes in the way we use our HQ building, speeding up a process that now sees some colleagues working at home more frequently.

Finally, prioritise energy efficiency above anything else. Reducing the amount of energy that your building uses is a first step in any decarbonisation plan and greatly increases the effectiveness of the more obvious technologies.

It’s also important to bear in mind that a ‘one size fits all’ method won’t work as every building is different. However for most buildings, upgrading the installation and thermal efficiency is a “must”, other technologies such as heat pumps can be unsuitable, or operate very inefficiently if the insulation is not sufficient. This should be done before any low carbon heat sources are installed as the cost-benefit for other equipment often relies on the insulation.

Our Solution

EA Technology is still in the process of installing the commissioning the various low carbon technologies being deployed as part of this project.  We’ve recently installed a 372Kwh lithium-ion battery storage system, and the low-carbon heat system along with the PV panels will be generating around 50Kwh of zero carbon electricity. Our building control system balances the needs of all these systems to ensure we prioritise low-carbon generation. As a result, we save over 94,000 tonnes of CO2 a year being released into the atmosphere.

However we know that our decarbonisation journey is far from over. We have gathered a great deal of information so far and we are learning as we progress along our journey to Net Zero. As we continue to complete our decarbonisation project, we will be sharing each step on our website.

We also welcome anyone that is interested on tours of our HQ building in Cheshire, both virtual and in person, where you can see the progress for yourself!

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