A Capital idea

Major organisations from the arts sector have pledged to help London fight climate change by signing up to a ground-breaking initiative designed to to reduce their carbon footprints . The Tate, Southbank Centre, National Gallery and National Theatre are recent signatories of the London Development Agency (LDA) scheme ‘Green500’, which aims to establish the capital as a low-carbon blueprint of sustainability. It hopes to achieve this goal by encouraging the public and private sectors to come together and share best practice.

There is generally a lack of data available on the impact the arts sector has on the environment – a fact that has been admitted by the DCMS¹. However, an indicative study for the DCMS has revealed that the carbon footprint of galleries, theatres and museums can be quite substantial. The research, which examined 19 organisations including the National Gallery and the Tate, revealed that the participants emitted over 112,000 tonnes of CO2 from electricity and gas use alone².
The DCMS has pledged to help the organisations it is responsible for, such as those in the arts sectors, to reduce their impact on the environment through a sustainable development action plan which runs until 2011. One of the department’s key actions is to develop a more accurate analysis of the sector’s carbon footprint and identify ways to reduce it³.
The early indications are that arts organisations are getting serious about developing more sustainable operations. For example, the Southbank Centre has installed two boreholes for the Royal Festival Hall, which raise about 200,000 cubic metres of water to provide over a megawatt of cooling capacity and reduce electricity usage. The centre has also taken measures to improve its energy efficiency by using a state of the art monitoring system. Finally, Southbank has created a grey water project which is designed to identify more environmentally sensitive ways to get rid of waste water.
Project Director, Ian Blackburn, says the support and expertise offered by schemes such as Green500 is crucial: “The challenges of climate change are something no organisation can choose to ignore. We have been making good progress and it is great to have the support of Green500 as we work to make Southbank Centre as sustainable as possible.” All organisations in the sector will receive practical advice on matters such as reducing carbon dioxide emissions, improving energy efficiency, water usage and waste management. The signatories are currently working with a specially designated ‘carbon mentor’ to help them achieve this. They will work together to develop a tailored emissions reduction action plan. This is based on an initial and detailed ‘carbon opportunities assessment’ (COA).
Green500 also has an awards scheme in place, which recognises its members for the amount of carbon they save through the implementation of their COA, as well as their existing practices for reducing emissions.. Green500 members will be encouraged to share best practice about reducing their carbon emissions, and to benefit from practical support and recognition to help them become more carbon efficient. Thanks to the number of major venues that have signed up, the arts sector has the potential to become a leader within the initiative.