Everything we do is based around the notions of sustainability, recycling and reduction of needless waste or pollution.
As an organisation, we strongly feel that we MUST contribute in every way possible to the solutions that are a necessary part of solving our very real climate crisis.
Our mission, put simply, is to cut our net carbon emissions to zero by 2025 and to try to become carbon negative beyond that point. While we know we cannot and will not solve the climate crisis on our own, it is up to each of us to play our part in tackling the issue.
NOTHING LESS!
We initially started on the road to the complete electrification of our infrastructure in 2016, when we swapped out our diesel lawnmowers for a battery powered robotic lawn mower. This might seems a strange place to start, but the outcomes were incredible.
Servicing and maintenance costs dropped to little or nothing. Fuel costs dropped to negligible and the time saved was a minimum of 3.5 hours per week between March and October each year.
Our site sits on about 4.5 Acres of parkland that has to be constantly maintained and this was proving to be both expensive and very time consuming.This lead us to explore other options and to think outside the box about everything and to challenge previously held conceptions of how things are done.
In 2018 we started replacing our oil fired heating with air to air heat pumps.
These have proven to be very successful and deliver 3.8 Kw of heating / cooling for every Kw of electricity used.They are super efficient, work at the touch of a button, can be programmed for time / temperature or both and are almost instant in terms of heating and cooling.
In 2019 we installed a 7.2 Kw BEV (Battery Electric Vehicle Charger) to pave the way for a transition to all electric transport in the company. Initially this was solely to provide a charge point for any visiting BEV's, but in late 2019, our MD purchased a used, low specification Tesla Model S for use as his private vehicle.
This car revolutionised the very conception of transport to such an extent that it was immmediately obvious that here was the future and a pathway to Carbon neutrality.AgriData Ltd have embarked on an ambitious programme of swapping out the remaining oil fired central heating systems for air to air heat pumps.
This will mean that by the end of 2020, we will be fully electric in terms of heating and cooling.By end of 2021, we hope to have installed enough Solar PV panels with a battery storage system, to completely offset our electricity use in terms of heating and cooling and other office infrastructure use.
By end of 2025 we hope to have additional sources of renewable electricity generation installed to allow us to be completely off-grid capable, with enough energy production to cater for BEV charging at night and all other needs during the day.
Couple all of this with the complete transition of our transport to fully electric vehicles and you begin to see how carbon neutrality is both achievable and desirable.Below, are a series of links to pages that outline the economics of each system we have installed and some of the upsides and downsides of each.
We hope you find these useful to you if you are thinking in terms of using any of these systems in your life;
These are OUR thoughts and findings from using some of these systems and may not reflect what others will find in different circumstances.
Good, professional advice is key to the success of any system installation or upgrade, so we have listed the suppliers who supplied us with our equipment and who installed it on our behalf..
The road to sustainable carbon neutrality is not that difficult given the right people, advice, attitude and equipment and one we should all at least try to take.