The Francis Crick Institute

The Francis Crick Institute is a world leading multi-disciplinary biomedical research institute in the heart of London’s Kings Cross. The Institution has set carbon targets to achieve a 50%reduction in Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 2030 and to reach net zero emissions by2040. A key component to this is reducing energy consumption. The Institute has optimised its Building Energy Management system to make impressive energy and carbon savings, without any significant capex investment.

An energy journey in action

The Francis Crick Institute aims to achieve a 15% reduction in overall annual energy consumption by 2028. The nature of the Institute’s research means that its buildings, including a data centre, consume a lot of energy. The BEMs system plays a key role in delivering energy efficiency and energy reduction goals. Energy savings were maximised through several measures, including:

• 25% reduction in air change rates in Critical science environments. Addressing Ventilation energy use in the energy intensive data centre. Creating wider temperature control deadbands in general Lab space. Optimising occupancy time schedules. A data centre project, which saw the Computer Room Air Conditioning (CRAC) controls
  replaced with a Schneider Building Management System, enabled full control over energy and cooling use. BEMs was also deployed to regulate Air Change per Hour (ACH) in critical environments. These improvements led to considerable energy and carbon reductions.

Energy and carbon savings

The Institute has used BEMS across electrical energy and gas energy to help make impressive inroads towards meeting its carbon reduction goals. Overall, the Institute has reduced carbon emissions by 20% from 2019/20 to 2023/24. In the same time frame, the facility has reduced its overall energy consumption by 8% compared to our baseline year of 2019/20. The BEMs project has achieved the following results:

• Reducing carbon emissions by 696 tonnes.
• Making costs savings of £274,160 year on year based on current energy costs.
• Making a return on investment of less than one month.
• Fully controlling the energy intensive data centre 24/7 365 days a year.

Benefits

• Contributing to carbon reduction goals
• Delivering energy saving without major CAPEX investment
• Delivering cost savings
• Reducing energy consumptions in the most energy intensive operations