ENERGY AWARENESS TODAY, STRATEGIES FOR TOMORROW
If you've ever visited an indoor pool, and enjoyed the year-round warmth of the water, you've probably never even considered the cost of heating a volume of water and air that size. But as the operators of any pool are aware, the energy costs are amongst the highest costs in running the business.
As such Coral Leisure, in partnership with the local County Councils, are always trying to reduce the energy costs to ensure the sustainability of all our Centres and to reduce our carbon footprint.
ENERGY CHAMPIONS
Uniquely, Coral leisure has a dedicated Energy Consultant for the whole group, and led by this Consultant, Coral has implemented many energy saving measures over the last 7 years with the help of the SEAI Better Energy Communities grant scheme, ESB Smart Energy Services and EcoMerit.
The group carbon footprint in 2015 was about 4,500 Tonnes for all 9 Centres, over the next 5 years the total group footprint was reduced to 1,993 Tonnes. It is our goal to further reduce our Carbon footprint by 50% over the next 5 years by availing of the various grant schemes and green energy financing to replace older gas boilers with carbon neutral biomass boilers, increasing the use of PV panels, and making our buildings airtight by addressing the overall insulation properties of the building walls, windows, floors and pool tanks.
The 4 biggest users of electrical energy are the air circulating and extraction fans, the pool circulating pumps, the health suite and lights. The main users of thermal energy are the space heating, the pools water heating, and showers.
Another feature unique to Coral Leisure; each centre has a dedicated Energy Champion who is responsible
for taking accurate daily readings of the main energy users and tracking them, as well as monitoring all equipment so that the scheduled maintenance is carried out on an ongoing basis. This is important to maintain the effectiveness of all machinery from an energy saving perspective.