Submitted by Grainne Kennedy on Mon, 2016-12-19 15:44
Last month was Spotlight on Energy month and we challenged you to test your knowledge of all things energy at the University with our online quiz. Congratulations to Kayleigh Paske from the Department of Psychology who won our prize.
Below we give you the answers and explain some of the facts and figures behind it all!
If the University’s energy bill was split evenly between every member of staff, roughly how much would it cost each person?
Answer: £1500
There are currently around 10,800 staff at the University, so if you split our annual energy costs of around £16 million equally, the bill would be £1,482 to be precise!
The University used 243 million kWh of energy in 2014-15. If this energy was used to power a single 40-watt lightbulb, roughly how long would it last for? (assuming the bulb didn’t need replacing!)
Answer: 700,000 years
Going back in time, that’s roughly as long ago as the Neanderthals split genetically from Homo Sapiens. To put it another way, our total energy use could power 700,000 lightbulbs for the whole year!
Dividing up the University’s electricity use equally between every member of staff would mean each of us using an average of 10,833 kWh every year. When compared to the average UK household, this means:
Answer: Staff use 340% more electricity at work than at home
This means that staff use over 3 times more electricity at work than at home! (average household electricity use according to Ofgem is 3,200 kWh).
The carbon emissions resulting from the University of Cambridge’s electricity and gas use in 2014-15 could fill Wembley Stadium:
Answer: 35 times over
In other words, we could fill up Wembley Stadium with our carbon emissions every 10 days!
How many carbon emission-reducing projects on the University estate been funded so far by the Energy and Carbon Reduction Project?
Answer: 69
It’s 69, but there are far more in the pipeline, visit http://www.environment.admin.cam.ac.uk/ecrp to find out about how to submit an application for funding.
The graph above shows electricity use on a typical Friday (blue line) and a typical Saturday (black line) in a University Building on the West Cambridge site. Around 13% less energy is used at the weekend in this building. The yellow line shows a day where there was a 23% reduction in electricity use – what happened on that day?
Answer: It was Christmas day
If we switched everything off at every weekend just like we do for the Christmas holidays, just imagine how much more energy we would save!
How much energy does the average laboratory drying cabinet use in a day?
Answer: 18 kWh (the equivalent of 2 average UK households)
The Environment & Energy section is due to provide funding to replace old, inefficient drying cabinets with newer models. Visit http://www.environment.admin.cam.ac.uk/equipment-replacement-programme to find out more.
If everyone at the University switched equipment off when it wasn’t being used (and was safe to do so), what percentage of the total energy bill could be saved?
Answer: Up to 10%
According to the Carbon Trust, we could save 10%. We’ve seen plenty of examples of this in buildings where staff have been encouraged to switch things off and electricity bills have reduced accordingly. In the Gurdon Institute, one lab managed to cut their energy use by around 40%!
How much money could the University save annually, if all open fume cupboard sashes were lowered by just one inch?
Answer: £50,000
We've got special 'shut the sash' stickers you can order from us if you want a useful reminder on your fume cupboards!