Background
London Marathon Events (LME) is an events company inspired by activity. They organize annual mass participation events to promote running, cycling and swimming in the capital. These include the London Marathon and Ride London, attracting over 120,000 participants in the last year. LME and its staff are inspired by climate and are taking bold steps to reduce the organisation’s carbon footprint.
Environmental sustainability is a key pillar for LME adopting a core focus on waste reduction and recycling at their events. Actions taken include printing runner numbers on demand, reducing the number of bottles on route, and increasing their overall recycling rate by 60%. Since 2020, LME has published annual environmental impact reports, setting out the waste and emissions from their events and other operations, as well as the sustainability efforts that they are undertaking.
Involvement in the Mayor’s Business Climate Challenge
LME enrolled in the Mayor’s Business Climate Challenge (BCC), an energy efficiency programme which supports businesses to reduce their energy consumption, to accelerate building decarbonisation efforts in London. Technical experts from Turner & Townsend provided advice on energy reduction actions, helping LME to understand their energy consumption and allowing staff to assess their consumption patterns, address anomalies and make continual improvements. Knowledge sharing with other firms participating in the challenge allowed LME to discuss new energy saving options and overcome challenges to these.
34% reduction in energy consumption and savings of £6000
LME began to implement “quick win” energy conservation measures straight after T&T audited their building. They quickly identified that they could switch their heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system to “optimizing” mode and adjust it to better match office usage patterns. The firm has reduced their energy consumption by 34% and saved £6000 in the pilot year.
The top three low-cost actions LME has implemented since receiving recommendations are:
- Ensuring the server room setpoint temperature is set to 21 degrees.
- Encouraging staff to switch off appliances when not in use.
- Adjusting HVAC controls to match office use patterns.
Facilities Manager Andrew Abdelmassih has incorporated monitoring energy usage into his regular routine to troubleshoot and identify ways to reduce energy use spikes. He has been testing options to reduce LME’s energy consumption as fewer people work from the office than before the pandemic.
Identifying solutions and promoting behavioural change
One of the things Andrew discovered was that the building’s HVAC system was operating continuously on the ground floor, even though it was completely unoccupied. Andrew then found that he could save energy by having the system on come online in this area for two hours during office hours.
Andrew recognised the importance of getting staff on board to save energy, by encouraging staff to adopt practices like as turning computers, printers and meeting room lights off when unused. But since behaviour change can be challening Andrew decided to go one step further, installing smart plugs for office equipment. He can now schedule when appliances come on and off from his phone and track usage.
The upskilling element is crucial for the firm. Having committed and motivated staff who apply the BCC’s learnings has had a real impact.
