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World Environment Day

To celebrate World Environment Day we thought we’d hand over the reigns to David Bonney, our Building Conservation and Engineering Manager for an update on sustainability here at the Centre...

We’re far more than just an iconic building. Sustainability has always been at the very heart of this building's design and continual improvement will ensure a truly sustainable cultural arts centre that the people of Wales can be truly proud of.

The Operations Team are tasked with delivering a cost effective service year-on-year and to date have replaced 80% of the house and stage lighting with energy efficient LED’s which has resulted in a saving of 86% of the energy used in the front of house lighting. Read more about this Connected Light project.

"Any savings that we make on operating the building free up funds that can be used to enable us to meet our charitable activities."

David Bonney

More recently the system which controls the heating and cooling of the building has been replaced, allowing the operations team to better control the amount of electric, gas and water being used, and we were already seeing a 7% reduction in our gas use prior to lockdown.

We also bulk buy all our gas and electricity which results in energy costs that are typically 10% lower than most of the local buildings and every month each of the utility bills is checked to ensure we do not overpay for our electricity, gas and water.

During the lockdown period and while maintaining ‘a building ready for use’ we have achieved a reduction of 66% in electric, 87% in gas and 82% in water use.

Our Display Energy Certificate (DEC) improves every year and we were recently accredited with B grade (DEC’s are graded from A to E with A being the best) which is great news.

Longer term sustainable projects include the use of solar cells which could provide power for some of the building and we’re also looking into rainwater harvesting.

Google map showing Viridor's proximity to our building

We’re also working with Cardiff Council and the Carbon Trust on a exciting ‘Greener Cardiff’ project which will see excess heat from the local Viridor waste treatment plant being used to heat our building, one of the first local businesses to lead the way and helping to make Cardiff a greener city.

David Bonney

Help us to keep our creative and community work going

There are lots of ways you can support us