With its ancient stonework, distinctive red-cloaked undergraduates, alumni including the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and a recent 600th birthday, the traditional view of the University of St Andrews is very much aligned with its place as Scotland’s oldest seat of learning.
However, a new energy plan that involves piping hot water from a ?25 million biomass boiler four miles away aims to make its technology as cutting-edge as the most modern of university campuses.
The 6.5 megawatt boiler, which is being built in an old paper mill in the nearby village of Guardbridge, forms half of St Andrews’ highly ambitious plan to become carbon-neutral in its buildings over the next few years – the other main planned emissions cutter being a wind farm.
With annual utilities bills approaching ?6 million and rising at up to 18 per cent a year, the plan is for the boiler’s clean energy to help control the university’s costs by removing reliance on fluctuating global oil prices, as well as cutting carbon dioxide by 6,000 tonnes a year.
The university says that the rise in fuel costs alone is equivalent to paying 120 staff – and, as Derek Watson, the institution’s quaestor and chief executive, puts it: “We want to be able to spend that money on people rather than oil.”
The boiler’s location has meant laying miles of underground pipes and shutting the main road through Guardbridge for up to eight weeks during the early months of 2016, causing travel headaches for many commuters.
The university had hoped to avoid shutting the road but was forced to because areas of the site were deemed of special scientific interest by Scottish Natural Heritage and also because the pipes could not be laid below the water table. About 2,000 information leaflets have been distributed throughout the local area, special presentations have been held and a 24-hour dedicated hotline set up in an attempt to manage the disruption.
But why build the boiler so far from town in the first place? Mr Watson explained that the alternative – installing a similar facility in St Andrews itself, which, with its famous golf courses, ancient history and beautiful coastline, is a highly heritage-sensitive town – was never an option.
“The planners were quite open and up front and said that we were not going to get planning consent,” he said.
That put Guardbridge, whose mill, Curtis Fine Papers, shut its doors in 2008 and was bought by the university in 2010, in the picture. “We hope to regenerate Guardbridge, which had its economic heart ripped out in 2008,” Mr Watson said. “It was a very well run mill; ironically it was shut by utilities prices – the cost of oil and water.”
The energy centre is being built with the help of an ?11 million loan from the Scottish Partnership for Regeneration in Urban Centres Fund, a ?10 million grant from the Scottish Funding Council and ?4 million from the university’s own budget.
So how will it work? Instead of burning fossil fuels, water will be heated using wood chips cut on site from an annual 15,000 to 17,000 tonnes of logs sourced within a 50-mile radius. The water is expected to lose only about?3°C?by the time it reaches the university’s buildings on the west side of St Andrews. It will then be pumped back to the boiler, its temperature having by then dropped by about a third, to be re-heated and used again.
Also included in the project is the planned relocation of more than 250 office staff to Guardbridge.
When it comes to cutting carbon, while finances are certainly a strong driver for universities, it must also be said that there are strong reputational advantages too – with scholarly research often pointing to the necessity for greener policies, as well as legally binding targets to cut a third of carbon dioxide by 2020 included in the UK Climate Change Act.
“If universities can’t lead on climate change, I’m not sure who can,” Mr Watson said. “Mother Nature doesn’t listen when you say we have to wait 10 years. These are issues we have to face.”
<榴莲视频>In numbers
120 – the number of staff that the rise in fuel costs is equivalent to paying
<榴莲视频>Campus news
Birkbeck, University of London
The first ever Ordnance Survey map of Mars has been created after a request by an academic. Peter Grindrod, lecturer in planetary science at Birkbeck, University of London, asked the UK’s mapping agency to assemble the digital map of the planet using open data published by Nasa for his work with the European Space Agency’s ExoMars rover project, which is due to land a probe on Mars in 2019. Charting about 3.8 million square miles, some 7 per cent of Mars’ surface, the map may have the potential to be used in future missions to Mars, Dr Grindrod said.
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh has secured a ?200 million loan from the European Investment Bank towards building and refurbishment projects. The institution has also agreed to borrow a further ?100 million from a US investment fund, with the remaining ?1.2 billion of the budget coming from capital grants, fundraising and annual surpluses. Schemes in Edinburgh’s 10-year plan include a new home for the School of Biological Sciences, the construction of a Data Technology Institute and refurbishment of the School of Law at Old College.
Soas, University of London
A politics student has made his debut for England’s rugby union team in the Six Nations. Maro Itoje, who is in his third year at Soas, University of London, starred as a substitute in England’s 40-9 victory against Italy in Rome on 14 February and was due to start against Ireland on 27 February. According to The Times’ Stuart Barnes, the 21-year-old Saracens forward “played like a seasoned international” during ?a “superb debut”, while The Independent’s Hugh Godwin has even called for the “extraordinary” Itoje to be made England captain.
De Montfort University
An exhibition about the Russian space programme has opened at De Montfort University’s Heritage Centre. It is based on the collection of PhD student Andy Thomas, who researched the Soviet space programme for his MA and collected memorabilia that dates from the 1957 Sputnik 1 mission and 1961 flight of Yuri Gagarin, the Russian pilot who became the first human in space. The exhibition includes everyday objects such as lights, models and children’s toys with pictures of astronauts as well as rare, original drawings by astronautic theorist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.
Queen Margaret University
A postgraduate degree for civil servants and charity leaders has been launched by Queen Margaret University. The Edinburgh-based institution is offering the master of public administration degree in partnership with the Association of Chief Officers of Scottish Voluntary Associations. All students who enrol on the course, which will be available for full-time and part-time study, will benefit from workplace learning within another organisation.
University of Brighton
Researchers have developed a tracking system that shows if people using computers are bored or not. University of Brighton academics used video tracking to monitor users’ involuntary “non-instrumental” movements, which decline when people are truly paying attention. The discovery could be used by online tutoring programmes to adapt to students’ levels of interest, or by film directors or video game-makers to see what captures users’ attention.?
Loughborough University
There is no evidence of a decline in A-level maths standards since the 1990s, according to a study from mathematicians at Loughborough University. Researchers judged 66 A-level scripts from the 1960s, 1990s and the current decade and found that a grade “B” today is equivalent to an “E” in the 1960s. However, the study found that standards appear to have remained constant over the past 20 years. Ian Jones, lecturer at the institution’s Mathematics Education Centre, said that the research was carried out in response to widespread concern that maths A levels are getting easier.
University of York
A study has found that global sea levels rose faster in the past century than in any of the previous 27. Roland Gehrels, from the University of York’s environment department, was part of a team that found that without 20th-century global warming, sea levels would have risen by less than half the observed increase from 1900 to 2000, and might even have fallen. Instead, the global sea level rose by about 14 centimetres. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used a new statistical approach developed by academics at Rutgers and Harvard universities.
Print headline: Biomass boiler to ignite a carbon-neutral future
