FullreportonCanolfanRheidol-Building.docVIP

August 2011 revisions Canolfan Rheidol By Roderic Bunn Take a hectare rural site in Aberystwyth, West Wales. Create a master plan involving new offices for Ceredigion County Council and the Welsh Government (WG). Add a leisure centre, two swimming pools and three schools, and you have the ingredients for a large district heating and cooling scheme, all powered by renewable sources of energy. For renewable source, read biomass. Commercial forestry in Wales harvests around 770,000 tonnes of sustainable timber each year. Of this, around 230,000 tons ends up as residue, half of which is high quality woodchip. Of the 115,000 tonnes available, the project at Aberystwyth would need just 4,000 tonnes of wood chip per year. Security of energy supplies doesnt get more certain than that. The question is: now that key buildings on the site have been occupied and the biomass-powered district system is up and running, how well is it all working? Has the Ceredigion County Council hit its energy and carbon dioxide targets, and are the occupants comfortable and more productive? The Carbon Trust through the Department of Energy and Climate Changes Low Carbon Building Performance programme has provided mentoring and monitoring support to Ceredigion County Council for the design and delivery of its new office building, now called Canolfan Rheidol. The support ran from the detailed design stage through construction and into post-occupancy monitoring. Every stage of the design and installation has been assessed, and the initial performance measured by the monitoring of energy consumption and occupant satisfaction. Procurement The brownfield site in the centre of Aberystwyth was divided into three plots. Two plots were allotted to offices for Ceredigion County Council and the Welsh Government. The third plot is still to be developed. The site lies between railway lines to the north and a busy road to the south, which meant that extra care was needed for natural ventilation to work. T