This year we've had two blackouts on campus, and both have been hugely successful. I hope this will encourage students and academics to think twice about their carbon footprint in the future. One of the main things that we noticed on both occasions is that people are still leaving their monitors on when they log off! This may not seem like a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but 100s of those 'blinky lights' being left on actually uses up a fair bit of energy.
To encourage people to turn off their monitors in the future and to reduce the amount energy being used, I think something needs to be done. If anyone has any ideas for this please do pop me an email!
To highlight the impact that Blackout has had upon the universitys carbon footprint, in total in the last Blackout, together we closed 43 windows, switched off 818 monitors, 28 lights, 294 Plug Sockets, 2 non-network printers, 31 PC speakers and 90 other pieces of electrical equipment! That is huge! Compared to any other average weekend, the university achieved some amazing results, with some buildings experiencing as much as a 25.96% decrease in energy consumption over the blackout weekend with an average of a campus wide reduction of 8.26% in energy consumption!
This does not seem like a huge amount, but imagine the amount of carbon that this would produce over a whole year!
If you missed out on the Blackout this year, and would like to take part next year in helping us minimise our carbon footprint please do pop me an email, and I'll add you to the list. Current dates for the next Blackout have not been confirmed yet.
Taking part in the Blackout is not only great for your CV, it's a volunteering activity, you get free pizza, and a free Blackout hoody, and free entry to a SU event! What have you got to lose!?