We are investing £655k to provide renewable electricity and heat to our council offices and leisure facility in Clowne.

We bid for and successfully received £455k from the Governments swimming pool support fund to assist with improving energy efficiency of public leisure facilities.

As the leisure facility is in the same building as our main headquarters we are also investing £200k to expand the system to cover the offices.

The money will be used to install a combined heat and power (CHP) unit at the Arc office and leisure centre complex. CHPs generate electricity from an energy source, with a by-product of the generation being heat, which is captured and used to replace the existing heat production from the traditional boilers.

The Arc building has seen an overall increase for both gas and electricity from £110,615 in 2022/23 to £415,276 in 2023/24 an increase of £304,661.

It is anticipated that by installing the CHP units it will save approximately £150,000 per annum and realise carbon reductions of 245 tonnes per year (based October 2023 gas and electricity unit costs).

Cabinet Member for Health and Wellbeing, Councillor Mary Dooley said, “This has been an ambition of ours for some time and we are pleased to have finally received a grant to help us install this technology, which will contribute to our Carbon Reduction plan to deliver Net Zero by 2050.

“The cost of energy continues to hit everyone hard, and we are no exception, so by embracing this proven technology we can lower what we pay and help reduce our carbon emissions, whilst still providing a quality service to our customers, which has to be a win-win for everyone.”