Background
Vipassana Trust is an educational charity which provides 10-day residential Vipassana meditation courses to the public on a donation-only basis. In Suffolk, the charity operates out of Walnut Tree Manor; a farmstead dating back to the seventeenth century.
As well as the Grade-II listed Manor House, the Suffolk site comprises a connected Coach House (twentieth century), a large accommodation block, a kitchen, dining rooms, a meditation hall (formerly a school assembly hall) and various outbuildings (old classrooms) including office and storage space.
The charity is environmentally conscious and its Energy committee was therefore keen to understand how their buildings could be improved further.
Our support
Groundwork’s Sustainable Business Consultants visited the centre to understand the fabric of the buildings and assess what measures were currently in place.
Using data provided by the committee, they calculated the centre’s carbon footprint, which summarises the total amount of greenhouse gases generated by the centre’s operations.
Once the baseline was established and a site audit complete, consultants were able to develop a decarbonisation plan which outlined the steps which could be taken by the charity to reduce their carbon emissions.
Next steps
Consultants provided guidance within the carbon reduction plan related to:
- How to improve insulation in the buildings
- Where and how to introduce solar panels and optimise the use of batteries
- How to install a ground source heat pump to serve a listed building
If these and other measures are implemented, Vipassana Trust’s carbon footprint could reduce by 46.3 tCO2e.
