“Energy awareness today, Strategies for tomorrow”

If you’ve ever visited an indoor pool, and enjoyed the year-round warmth of the water, you’ve probably never even considered the cost of heating a volume of water and air that size.
But as the operators of any pool are aware, the energy costs are amongst the highest costs in running the business.

As such Coral Leisure, in partnership with Cork County Council, are always trying to reduce the energy costs to ensure the sustainability of Coral Leisure Cobh Ltd and to reduce our carbon footprint.
Uniquely Coral Leisure has a dedicated Energy Champion for the whole group, and led by this champion, Coral Leisure sought out assistance from ESB Smart Energy Services. Their brief was straightforward, if not simple: find ways to reduce annual energy consumption. This meant cutting usage from 1,200 kWh/m2 to 900 kWh/m2

“Energy is the biggest cost to the Leisure Centre after wages. We create about 4,500 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions every year around the 9 Centres.
Last year we cut that by 400 tonnes and we expect to cut another 400 tonnes this year.

The 4 biggest users of energy are the air circulating fans, the pool circulating water pumps, the sauna/steam room and the lights.”

Siobhan Tighe, Managing Director of the Coral Leisure Group, explains what we do “Coral Leisure puts energy and environmental awareness to the forefront of their operations. We conduct regular energy conservation audits and evaluations of our centres and our Energy Management Strategies are in place across the group. In addition we design and implement relevant site specific solutions, ensuring industry best practice and continuing financial savings to our clients. We advise on relevant Government grant availability and assist in the application process on your behalf.”

In the last year alone Coral Leisure has undertaken projects in every one of the centres aimed at reducing energy costs and increasing energy efficiency. Simple measures like installing new Pool Covers and installing modern energy efficient LED lighting in all centres can make an initial huge difference to energy costs.

Coral Leisure also undertakes more complex projects such as installing De-strat Fans, (which push warm air back down into pool halls keeping heating costs down) and computerised Business Energy Management Systems (which automatically control heating, lighting, pump speeds and air handling depending on the time of day and customer usage levels).

Coral Leisure also believes all of these measures go hand in hand with providing ongoing staff training in the importance of energy saving. This ensures the optimum return on investment on all energy saving projects.
A feature unique to Coral Leisure; each centre has a dedicated Energy Champion who is responsible for taking accurate energy readings on a weekly basis and tracking them, as well as monitoring all equipment so that scheduled maintenance can be carried out on an ongoing basis to maintain the effectiveness of all machinery from an energy saving perspective.

For more information on what Coral Leisure could do for your leisure centre contact either Siobhan at siobhan.tighe@coralleisure.ie or David at david.moore@coralleisure.ie