Carbon Footprint

Eco Church

Eco Church is an A Rocha UK project, run in partnership with Christian Aid, the Church of England, the Methodist Church and Tearfund.

Eco Church’s free online survey and supporting resources are designed to help churches express care for God’s world in worship and teaching, in how buildings and land are looked after, in how churches engage with their local community and global campaigns, and in the personal lifestyles of congregations. The vision is for churches of all denominations to care for creation as an integral part of loving their neighbours and following God faithfully.

We joined Eco Church in late 2016, coinciding with our 2017 annual theme, “All Things Bright and Beautiful”, which explored ecology and the environment through science, faith and the arts. During the theme year, we organised and hosted a series of events related to the environment and the impact of climate change.

We were awarded an Eco Church Bronze Award in 2016 and now hold a Silver Award. As part of our Eco Church commitment, we aim to reduce our buildings’ energy carbon footprint by 5% each year, a target we have consistently met since 2016. We have introduced awareness notices in Cathedral House encouraging people to switch off lights, turn down radiators and draw curtains.

The award scheme, however, is about more than energy use alone. In 2019, we began a wildflower planting scheme on the south side of the Cathedral, and our memorial garden includes wildlife-friendly features such as bird boxes and a log pile for insects.

With the kind permission of Eco Church/A Rocha, we have incorporated their logos into good housekeeping awareness notices in Becket Hall, encouraging people to switch off lights and turn down heating thermostats after use.

Solar PV Array

From the outset, we have been keen to install solar PV where financially prudent to do so. Cathedral House has various flat roofs with potential for small arrays. The higher north-west roof required substantial refurbishment in 2018, and this presented an opportunity to simultaneously install a 6.6kW (24 x 275W panels) solar array.

Working in partnership with Portsmouth City Council’s energy team and Portsmouth-based installer Space Renewables, we commissioned the array in September 2018. The panels sit below the parapet wall, giving some protection from high winds and keeping them out of sight from the street.

The array mainly powers our first-floor administrative offices, so much of the printing of service leaflets and letters is now solar-powered. It also serves the scholars’ flats above the offices, which add weekend demand when the offices are closed.

Since it was commissioned, the array has generated approximately 30,000kWh of electricity, and we estimate that more than 80% of this has been used on site. Our grid electricity tariff has risen by 200% since the array was installed, so the solar generation has helped cushion us against this steep price rise. The array also earns inflation-adjusted feed-in tariff (FIT) income under the UK microgeneration framework. This income, combined with grid electricity bill savings, is likely to bring the project’s capital costs to payback within less than 10 years.

When the smaller north-east roof comes up for refurbishment, there would be potential to add a further 2.2kW array. There is also potential for an array on the Cathedral’s high nave roof, which is not visible from the street, though this would require additional strengthening work given its greater exposure to high winds.

LED Lighting

With the legislative phasing out of traditional filament and halogen bulbs, the move to LED lighting is becoming increasingly urgent. We are already finding that bulbs for our existing fittings are increasingly difficult to source, and of poorer quality when we do.

The Cathedral presents a greater cost challenge for LED lighting, as most existing fittings are on dimming circuits linked to 30-year-old central control packs. As a low-cost, short-term measure, we have re-lamped the shop, greeting area and Nave without materially compromising the system. This alone has reduced demand by 15%, though a full upgrade to LED lighting throughout the Cathedral remains an ongoing goal.

Externally, the old floodlights have not been used since the 2008 recession, though new LED lighting was added to the bell tower in 2017. This uses minimal power and offers a range of colours, allowing us to illuminate the tower to mark special occasions and causes.

Our Fuel Cell

In early 2015, we installed a 1.5kWp micro combined heat and power (mCHP) plant in Cathedral House.

Roughly the size of a washing machine, the device uses hydrogen fuel cell technology to convert gas into electricity and heat at very high efficiency, up to 85% combined. The electricity it generates now meets more than 80% of the annual demand from Becket Hall and its kitchen, and the ground-floor Cathedral Innovation Centre offices and meeting rooms, while the useful heat provides hot water for the toilets. The unit produces energy at a lower cost, typically 50% below grid prices, and also earns feed-in tariff income, which we have been putting towards LED lighting works.

As the unit runs around the clock at a constant output, it displaces less efficient coal and gas-fired power from the grid for most of the time. As there is no combustion of gas, nitrogen oxide and sulphur oxide emissions are negligible, adding a further air quality benefit that is increasingly important in Portsmouth.

Fuel cell technology is not new; it has been used on many space missions. However, it is now growing in popularity globally for stationary and transport applications, and is even appearing in school chemistry syllabuses.

Fit for the Future

Fit for the Future is an environmental sustainability network with over 100 charities, heritage organisations, cultural venues and public sector organisations participating. It aims to help its members become climate-friendly, adaptive and resilient by collaborating and sharing knowledge.

We have been a member since 2019, contributing a case study on Cathedral House and playing an active role in the energy managers’ group. We have also attended Fit for the Future conferences on the Met Office’s UK climate predictions (2019) and on heating buildings (2022), and their online webinars continue to provide a valuable knowledge resource.

You can find out more about FFTF on their website here, you can also read the FFTF Case Study for Cathedral House here. You can find out more about UKCP18 on the dedicated Met Office webpage here.

Church of England Net Zero Carbon 2030

n February 2020, General Synod voted for the whole of the Church of England to achieve net zero carbon by 2030, and called for a plan of action setting out how this would be achieved. The vote recognised that the global climate emergency is a crisis for God’s creation and a fundamental injustice.

The plan of action, called the Routemap, was approved by General Synod in July 2022 in a Motion that asked for the Routemap to be endorsed, requested every Diocesan Synod to debate the Routemap as it applies to them, requested high energy users, including cathedrals, to draw up a programme of action based on the Routemap, and called for progress reports to Synod every three years.

The Routemap was written by the Net Zero Carbon sub-committee of the national Environmental Working Group. It went to consultation from October 2021 to February 2022, and the responses received, which included our own, helped shape the final version. You can view the Routemap here.

A number of milestones apply to Portsmouth Cathedral, and we aim to publish our progress against these as we align our carbon footprint with the Church of England’s net zero carbon scope.

You can find the Environmental Working Group’s national definition of net zero carbon here.

Energy Carbon Footprint

Since 2015 we have been actively recording our energy carbon footprint and taking measures to reduce it in support of both Church of England’s initiatives and our own Eco Church pledge.

Currently the footprint includes gas and electricity use at our two main buildings, the Cathedral and Cathedral House, that together make up the bulk of our energy consumption. Our initial target of a 20% weather-adjusted energy carbon emissions reduction by 2020 against a 2013 base year was achieved a year early in 2019, and as the table below shows, that reduction is now close to 40%.

We aim from 2025 to include emissions for clergy housing energy use and all Cathedral related reimbursable travel, to align with the Church of England net zero carbon 2030 scope. We intend to also adopt a new 2030 target for weather-adjusted emissions against a base year footprint of 2019 for the enlarged scope to ensure a continued focus on energy efficiency in a warming climate.

Energy carbon emissions and energy expenditure/income: Cathedral and Cathedral House

(1) Applying the relevant UK Government GHG reporting conversion factors to kWh of energy consumed https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/greenhouse-gas-reporting-conversion-factors-2021

(2) Applying also the relevant annual weather adjustment using the Stark heating degree day dataset https://www.stark.co.uk/degree-days-for-free

(3) Feed-in tariff (FIT) income earned under the UK microgeneration framework