Co-operative Area Energy Champions Training

Kris McGowan delivered the final Co-op training session last Thursday. On behalf of the Energy Saving Trust, Kris and his team have been delivering training up and down the country to Area Energy Champions who in turn have been delivering the training to Store Managers and Store Energy Champions. Fiddlers Ferry generates 2,000MW (Mega Watts) of electricity which is enough to power nearly 2 million homes and businesses in Manchester, Liverpool and the surrounding areas. The setting focussed the training on the task in hand – it is only 37% efficient and when you add to that the 30% transmission losses of the national grid and the inefficiencies of domestic and commercial buildings, only approximately 15% of the energy available in the coal is actually utilised. The Co-op have a target of reducing their energy use by 25% by 2012 and only through the assistance of the energy champions are they going to achieve that. This last session was a special one for the Operations Managers, to see what one of the training days was all about. The training sessions came about as the result of a joint co-operative & EST collaboration that will ultimately see the rollout of this training to all Energy Champions nationally. The training day demonstrates the importance of taking action to reduce energy consumption at home and how that can be replicated in store. We showed just how important the Area Energy Champions are in achieving our goal of helping all co-operative staff save money and energy both in store and in the home. Results are already being realised. One climate change sceptic who came to a session earlier in the year was inspired to tackle in-store energy straight away – in four weeks he has a achieved a 30% reduction in energy use in the store through implementing new routines and identifying energy wastage. Another store which had a £1million refit was not achieving energy savings – the energy champion identified that a new T5 lighting rig had been fitted, but the old inefficient T12 rig not removed, but just covered up. This action will save that individual store thousands of pounds and significantly affect its CO2 footprint. On average, lighting counts for approximately 20% of energy use in store. All District Energy Champions have participated in one of the sessions, as have the Area Energy Champions and Retail Skills Trainers. Once trained, the Area Champions pass on a condensed version of the training to all Store Energy Champs and an even further condensed version to all Store Managers – covering over 3000 stores nationwide. The Energy Saving Trust have been incredibly impressed by the Champion’s enthusiasm and commitment as you can see below “Of all the organisations I’ve worked with, it’s hard to think of any who have a more enthused and effective network of internal champions” Rob Bell, Head of Development at the Energy Saving Trust The feedback from the 21 training sessions has been very positive: “My belief is that we have really set the champions we have worked with up with the tools to go and continue the cascade process of a sustainable, self perpetuating package which will benefit all the recipients at home, at work and for the general good of the environment.” Nick Cairns, Regional Energy Manager