Everyone Active looks at the impending challenges that leisure facilities face to reduce carbon emissions.

Leisure centres consume large amounts of energy and so are also significant carbon emitters. Therefore, leisure operators and local authorities will need to prioritise new strategies and operational changes to tackle these emissions.

We’re proud to be working alongside our local authority partners, as part of our Net Zero Strategy to help make our company’s carbon emissions net zero.

Everyone Active Net-Zero from Everyone Active on Vimeo.

For any leisure centre to achieve net zero, every facet of a business will need to be reviewed.

Therefore, we’ve made decisions to ensure we’re tackling these challenges, such as hiring a Group Sustainability Manager, Peggy Lee. Peggy’s experience ensures she will play a leading role in advising on environmental and sustainability issues, as well as helping to implement our newly-ratified Net Zero Strategy.

As a specialist in advising senior management teams on environmental and sustainability strategy, she will provide expertise to ensure we reach our net zero targets.

These are the changes that will need to be implemented industry-wide to ensure there is the level of expertise and understanding to tackle the climate change challenges.

To provide some context and education on the changes that need to be implemented, Peggy has provided insights for the key steps to reach net zero.

These changes include the following areas:

Training and Awareness

We are looking to upscale and engage all colleagues with climate and carbon knowledge, building relevance in work and personal life to drive behavioural changes – small changes can make a big difference.

We have appointed Carbon Reduction Coordinators and will be providing carbon literacy training to all Contract Managers empowering them to take forward discussions around net zero internally and externally.

Renewable / Smart Technologies and Engagements

We are working with our 60+ local authority partners to ensure we’re optimising building and equipment energy efficiency through operational controls, smart technologies and building fabric improvements at our leisure centres.

We will also be gradually reducing the reliance on gas for heating through low carbon or renewable technologies, such as heat pumps, solar thermal, local heat network. We will also maximise opportunities of onsite renewable energy systems and EV charging points in our centres.

Our relationship with local authorities will see us support them in seeking funding through the Government’s Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS) or other funding options.

Internal and Operational Changes

As a business we have started taking steps to make our head office (support hub) building net zero in terms of carbon emissions by the end of 2023. This is the only building throughout the 200+ sites we operate across the country we own ourselves and therefore it’s the place where we have the most control over what can be changed. With that in mind, Everyone Active has committed to implementing several changes by the end of 2023 to ensure this target can be met.

We will be introducing onsite renewable energy system and EV charging points, decarbonising heating and using 100% renewable electricity. This will open the door to switching our vehicle fleet into electric vehicles by the end of 2026, and providing incentives for employees to decarbonise commuting.

We now have an increased understanding on operational characteristics of low carbon technologies, this will help us optimising their integration into existing plant systems for the best utilisation.

100% Renewable Energy and Carbon Offsetting

This starts by transitioning into 100% renewable tariff at our leisure centres, in line with local authority partners’ ambitions or by the end of 2030. While maximising our ability to reduce our direct and indirect emissions through the above, we will offset residual emissions preferably alongside other environmental co-benefits.

Bristol Leisure Centre Using Solar Thermal Technology

One of our Bristol-based leisure centres, which welcomes 40,000 visitors per month, has been using renewable energy to heat its swimming pool water this summer, thanks to newly installed, innovative, solar thermal technology.

Bristol City Council’s six figure investment at Easton Leisure Centre will work to reduce the centre’s carbon footprint, saving nearly 13 tonnes of CO2 from entering the atmosphere every year.

Easton Leisure Centre is managed by Everyone Active in partnership with Bristol City Council. It is one of eight sites across the area and the first to introduce the technology.

The solar thermal technology was installed by the Bristol-based renewable energy company, Solarsense, after the centre was chosen by the council to trial it alongside its current Solar PV system.

The technology involves over 800 tubes of viscose liquid which absorb the sun’s energy before the solar thermal array transfers the heat generated into the sites existing hot water storage.

If you want to find out more information on Everyone Active’s net zero strategy and the latest industry news, click here to sign-up to the Everyone Active quarterly e-magazine:

https://www.everyoneactive.com/everyone-everywhere-e-magazine/