07 June 2012

We’re in a bit of a spin at the moment about a new development set to cut greenhouse gas emissions at our West London campus.

The recently completed Northwind 100 is our first ever on-site wind turbine and it’s expected to supply over 133 megawatt-hours of renewable electricity to Sky Studios at Osterley.  That’s enough energy to light the office at the Sky Studios.

Furthermore, it’s estimated that every year it’ll help us to save the equivalent CO2 emissions of a standard petrol engine car driving 370,000 miles. That’s nearly 15 times around the Earth at the equator.

“As well as contributing to our 2020 on-site renewable energy goal, the turbine’s position at the heart of our campus is a clear demonstration of our commitment to reduce our carbon emissions,” said Fiona Ball, Head of Environment & Engagement at Sky.

The angular, 55-metre turbine is the perfect complement for another sustainable innovation we’ve recently put in place at Sky Studios. There is already an on-site power plant that enables us to take waste wood from the nearby area and efficiently turn it into both heating and cooling energy, with the resulting ash made available to local horticultural centres as fertiliser.

Both are sure to reinforce Sky Studios’ position as Europe’s most sustainable broadcast facility. It currently has an ‘A’ rated Energy Performance Certificate (EPC), helped in part by its built in natural ventilation, rainwater harvesting and energy-efficient lighting that operates according to the amount of sunlight available, or if it senses someone present in the room.

Sky Studios is just one example on how we work hard to be efficient and minimise our impact on the environment, and we’ve also been working hard to help Sky households too.

Helping you help the environment

Sometimes it’s the tiny things that make the biggest impact, so we’re always working to make it easy for you to enjoy your Sky services without a rising cost to the environment. Here are ten of our top initiatives.

1.    You can send any of your old Sky products back to us for free so we can reuse or recycle them.
2.    We’ve made our Sky+HD box 30% more energy efficient, and introduced an off switch to the front so you can easily power your set top box down completely.
3.    Sky+HD boxes have Auto Standby function which saves Sky households £20 million a year and 90,000 tonnes of CO2e.
4.    We’ve simplified the manufacture of Sky boxes and brought the process in-house, reducing the transportation of components.
5.    We’ve made our Sky boxes smaller, so we can transport more at a time.
6.    We’ve colour coded our wires so it’s easier for you to install your own Sky box. That cuts routine van journeys by our engineers.
7.    We’ve worked hard to make Sky boxes more reliable, and made it possible for more repairs to be carried out remotely, thus saving van trips by engineers.
8.    We take all waste away after an install for reuse and recycling.
9.    We’ve replaced our old 96 page user manual with a digital version, saving over 16 truck loads of paper every year.
10.    We’ve introduced a passive standby state to Our Sky+HD boxes that only uses half a watt of power.

There’s another thing: our Sky Carbon Calculator is a brilliant, fun way for you to find out ways of snipping your energy bills and identify where your biggest impact on the environment is.

If you want to find out more about what we do visit our environment page.

And to keep up to date with what else we do to be a sustainable business follow us @SkyBiggerPic