The Stage

Theatre Royal Plymouth makes £50k savings from going green

Published Thursday 12 June 2008 at 12:10 by Lalayn Baluch

Theatres Trust Conference: Theatre Royal Plymouth - the first performance venue to receive the Carbon Trust’s Energy Efficiency Award - has saved nearly £50,000 on utility bills after making environmentally friendly changes to its maintenance system.

Figures provided by the venue reveal that since 2002 it has cut its electricity usage by 19%, saving £20,300 under today’s prices, lowered gas consumption by 46%, cutting bills by £19,054, and reduced water use by 33%, saving £10,000. It also cut carbon emissions by 270 tonnes each year.

According to the theatre’s premises manager Kevin Faulkner, the savings were made by carrying out small maintenance changes around the site - such as replacing 15 watt bulbs by those that run on three watts, switching from 35 watt halogen lights to three watt LED bulbs, and fitting a new efficient boiler.

Speaking at the Theatres Trust’s Building Sustainable Theatres conference, Faulkner encouraged other venues to start by making small changes around their buildings to see differences in energy use, rather than trying to overhaul the way productions are made.

He said: “The longer something is on for the more energy it will use. Yes, you need to make changes to the shows, but initially you can look at all the things in your building which operate for 24 hours and 18 hours.

“That’s what we did, we went to those and changed them around. We introduced these purely and simply as part of maintenance, just changing the light bulbs, nothing really expensive.”

Faulkner previously worked at Plymouth performance venue and leisure centre the Pavilions, where he implemented similar changes that have saved the venue £87,000 annually.