UK's greenest university campus opens its doors

Queen Margaret's University in Edinburgh has taken advantage of the opportunity presented by its move to a new site to develop one of the greenest campuses in the UK, bolstering its sustainability credentials and saving more than £1m a year in energy costs in the process.

Saving energy wherever possible was key to the project, says Stephen Blowers from Dyer, the architects that worked on the project. "The university made energy saving such an important part of the brief, that we were able to do it from the start holistically," he explains.

Consequently, 85 per cent of the buildings' hot water and heating – including academic areas as well as accommodation for 500 students – is provided by a specially constructed biomass burner which burns wood chippings from sustainable forests within a five mile radius of the campus.

0But the most revolutionary part of the building is its thin-client IT infrastructure, rivalled only by Northumbria University and University College London, which provides about 1,250 low-energy computer terminals around the main academic building. Each of these thin-client devices are linked to on-site datacentres in two specially air-conditioned rooms.

By isolating the heat-intensive hardware in rooms that can be specially cooled, air-conditioning costs were cut significantly, says Fraser Muir, director of information services at the university.

"Each terminal consumes about 17W of power compared with the average PC, which can be up to 200W," he explains. "All the cooling is needed in two rooms which are air conditioned."

The lower power terminals – supplied by thin-client specialist Wyse – combine with reduced air-conditioning costs to deliver energy savings of about £100,000 a year.

With a potential 5,000 students around the academic building at any one time and 1,250 terminals – even operating at a low-power threshold – heat gain, not heat loss was the significant problem for the architects to overcome.

To address the issue, a natural ventilation system has been developed that purges the building at night, creating an airflow that helps cool the concrete beamless structure – the concrete then holds its temperature, releasing it during the day.

The building layout, which effectively uses corridors as ducts, allows most of the building to be naturally ventilated – with the exception of the atrium, which uses mechanically assisted ventilation, though not air conditioning, which is reserved only for the data rooms.

The main academic building also has an energy management system which regulates heating, blinds, ventilation and lighting automatically for optimum energy use – all lights are intelligent and switch off automatically when staff and students are not in the immediate area.

In addition to saving energy, the university has sought to cut water use through the installation of an efficient water system, including flushless urinals and a sustainable urban drainage system that filters into a specially constructed pond to prevent large-scale run off and flooding on site.

The net result of these design features is that the campus buildings have achieved the highest Breeam rating of any university in the UK.

Another one of the many crutches of the university's sustainability plan was to prevent people from driving to the campus. This was particularly challenging, as the institution moved from three urban sites to a green-belt location.

"We've done it by putting in place a combination of restrictions and incentives," explains Gill Kelly, green transport co-ordinator.

For example, on-site parking is restricted and the price of parking permits is based on the CO2 emissions of the vehicle.

Meanwhile, the use of bicycles is encouraged with a planned pool scheme, training and guided cycle tours to show routes to the city, as well as bike racks, showers and lockers.

Three bus routes serve the campus, as well as a train service, which takes six minutes from the city centre.

A car club offers a pool of two cars for staff who need to go into the city for meetings, saving an estimated 5,234 miles from being travelled by those who unnecessarily bringing their car to work.

All the measures have been enthusiastically welcomed by students and facilities managers alike, says Kelly, and what is more, huge commercial benefits are already being realised.

"If we applied the same energy prices on our three previous campuses to this one, we've already saved £1m in our first year of occupation," she says.