Leicester City Council (United kingdom)

Leicester City Council were involved in a project across 4 countries (UK, Austria, Denmark and Germany) looking into energy saving from intelligent metering and behaviour change. The consumption of 70 public buildings was made available online in graphic form in order to give occupants an idea of consumption trends. Via training sessions, the building users were shown the impact of their behaviour which was immediately and visibly demonstrated on their computer screens by the intelligent metering system. Over 600 people were trained as part of the programme.

The training programme at Leicester City Council spanned 26 Public Administration buildings. Individual training sessions were carried out and a training folder was provided with a copy of the training manual and other training material form the project (e.g. energy efficiency best practice guide, posters, stickers). Training included an energy walk around the building and findings from each session were summarised in a short action plan for each building        

As a result of this programme Leicester City Council were able to make significant reductions in energy, water and gas in 280 Public Administration buildings. However, there is a cost associated with measuring energy performance, in Leicester these costs were between 3,750 and 4,500 Euros per building depending on the metering system. However, many buildings demonstrated short payback periods of below a year due to the saving opportunities resulting from raised energy awareness and savings identified by the half hourly consumption information and follow up actions (Intelligent Energy Europe, 2014).