At York St John University we often pride ourselves on the picturesque and historic buildings that make up our campus in the North of England.  Our main teaching site is a patchwork quilt of the old and the new.  Our buildings date as far back as the 1800s right through to those that were constructed in the early 21^st century.  One of the more notable of our buildings is St Mary’s House – originally a Victorian work house now repurposed and converted into student accommodation.

Restrictions necessarily encountered when working on a property of its age mean that there is the potential for large sums of money to be exhausted through its upkeep and ongoing development.  Managing and maintaining listed buildings such as St Mary’s is an ever-present challenge and fitting out the rooms to meet the needs of a modern student population has called for fresh thinking and a new approach.

The in-house Estates Management team have been working tirelessly this year to modernise the building interior – using their own expertise to mitigate our reliance on external contractors wherever possible.  As a result they have been able to both effectively manage costs whilst also significantly improving the overall energy efficiency of the building. 

At the same time they have also successfully made it a much more attractive and enjoyable living environment.  Improvements during the most recent wave of refurbishments focused on the building’s fabric values, its structural materials and with the employment of highly specified heating control systems.

The feedback we have received from the suppliers of our environmental controls has been overwhelmingly positive.  They have been vocal with us, saying repeatedly that York St John have stood out among their clients in that we are the only ones really pushing the envelope – in terms of maximising energy savings and creating bespoke algorithms that are challenging their own standard approach.

So long as renewable energy suppliers seek to cover their initial development costs, buying renewable energy itself will come at a premium price.  Buying green energy alone will not yet be a sufficient substitute for overall energy efficiency.  Seizing opportunities to reduce overall energy usage and eliminating energy wastage wherever possible will reduce our costs and our environmental impact.

St Mary’s House, York

In addition, overall ventilation has been considerably improved in this building and communal areas have been increased.  However, despite the fact that the external windows are still yet to be replaced, the overall improvements to date are contributing to a net reduction of around 50% in the energy consumption and associated carbon emissions of this property.  This work is all in addition to the facilities and shared spaces being dramatically upgraded from their previous standard.

Global Goal 7

Energy efficiency and an awareness of both the environmental and commercial costs of our consumption will particularly help us meet Global Goal number 7 – which asks us to address the way we use energy. Seeking to take advantage of new energy solutions quickly will also help us to counter the negative impact of climate change.  Our targets to help us meet this goal include;

• Utilise modern energy sources and strive to make them more accessible
• Double the efficiency of our energy usage
• Promote research into technologies and investments in clean energy production
• Increase the percentage of renewable energy we consume

There is no silver bullet or single action that will resolve all of these challenges at once. Instead it will require our ongoing resolve and diligence in order to ensure we remain aware of our collective responsibilities.

If you wish to learn more about energy procurement and the university’s wider activities that are being introduced in order to manage our energy efficiency, please get in touch.

Further information about York St John’s Directorate of Estate management and Development can be found here;

https://www.yorksj.ac.uk/estate-management-and-development

Further information about the UN Global Goals can be found here;

https://www.globalgoals.org