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Naval air base embraces ‘green tech’ as it looks to end reliance of fossil fuels
7 November 2024
The Royal Navy’s biggest base in Cornwall is looking to dramatically reduce its energy usage – and end the use of fossil fuels to power/heat its buildings.
Royal Naval Air Station Culdrose near Helston – which is both home to and employs 3,000 people on a daily basis – is introducing an advanced IT system to manage energy usage and turning to solar panels and air source heat pumps instead of traditional fossil fuels.
The first of the 150 buildings across the 1,500-acre site are being converted, while the energy IT system is due to become operational this month, centrally monitoring and controlling heating and electricity usage in structures as diverse as training centres, accommodation blocks, offices and hangars for the Navy’s fleet of Merlin anti-submarine warfare helicopters, plus King Air training aircraft.
Already as part of the push to drive down bills and prevent waste, working with South West Water staff have carried out minor fixes to leaks such as taps, cisterns and toilets, saving one million litres of water per month (that’s enough to fill just over one third of an Olympic-sized swimming pool) and about £7,000.
Reducing electricity and gas usage or replacing it with sustainable alternatives is of a different magnitude.
A ten-year programme of rebuilding and new facilities/blocks/hangars has just begun, embracing the latest energy-saving improvements, but for now many buildings date from previous revamps of the site from the early 70s and early 2000s, but some structures go back to the earliest days of the airfield in the late 1940s.The air station consumes around 1m kWh of electricity on average every month, while gas usage in winter is four times higher than during the summer months.
Monitoring – and where necessary curbing – that usage is the first major step, explained Neil Howe, the civil servant in charge of infrastructure projects at Culdrose.
“It’s effectively like a home-hub you might have for your own domestic heating but on a much larger scale. It means our entire energy usage across the station can be monitored and controlled from a single, secure laptop,” he explained.
“Currently, each building manager is responsible for operating the utilities within their building but the system is laborious and just not efficient enough. Instead, we are working with a company called Equans to create a system that will allow us to efficiently control our energy usage – cutting waste and saving money.
“Obviously as an air station, we are responsible for operating aircraft that produce their own carbon footprint but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take all the practical steps to cut our emissions elsewhere. With this new system, along with other marginal gains across the business, we are taking direct action to be more sustainable while building resilience.”
Culdrose has carried out a survey to assess the geothermal potential below the air station as a green alternative to gas and is actively working on projects to promote wider use of solar and wind power around the airfield.
These initiatives compliment the work that has been undertaken to replace halogen lamps with LED that has already cut utility bills as well as improving hangar lighting for aircraft maintenance.
Mr Howe added: “The question is how do we make the best use of our geography and unlock the potential that Cornwall possess? We have a large land area around the airfield, and we are conscious of being sympathetic to the landscape. Solar power is an avenue we are exploring and the potential for green energy solutions on the base is really exciting.
“While the government is committing to greening the grid, we feel we have a social responsibility, business need, and a real enthusiasm to make sure that we are playing our part ‘inside the wire’.”
“These schemes fall under a wider green energy strategy being implemented by the air station, which includes plans to replace many of Culdrose’s aging buildings with modern designs over the next decade or so”.
To underline the air stations green credentials, this year 6,600 new trees have been planted as part of a project to replace the air station’s perimeter fence.
The trees, all single stems and of native species, have been planted in three areas around the air station that comply with flight safety and bird control policies. While not all will reach maturity, enough will survive to screen the base and provide additional wildlife habitats.