Improved Site Energy Efficiency

Go-Ahead is a large organisation with many offices, stations, garages and depots across the UK.

We work closely with the Carbon Trust to identify cost-effective schemes to help further reduce our carbon emissions. As a result we have made significant investments in energy management systems and energy efficient lighting. In 2008/09 we replaced traditional high bay lights at our bus and rail depots and multi storey car parks with new intelligent energy saving lights. 

The traditional lights accounted for a significant proportion of the carbon dioxide emissions caused by our site energy use and were very expensive to run.The new lights have sensors so that they turn on and off according to movement and if it is a sunny day they can adjust themselves to be less bright.This means that the system only provides light when it is needed. Initial results have been very encouraging and at some depots electricity usage has reduced by around 50%.

As a result of the committment of our energy aware employees and our investment in new energy saving technology we reduced our site energy by an impressive 16% in 2008/09.

The above chart shows the effect of the energy saving lights at our Victoria Sidings train depot, near Victoria Station, London.

Our new energy saving lights are estimated to reduce annual CO2 emissions by over 4,000 tonnes. This improved energy efficiency should save us around £1 million in annual operating costs.