Failure of public buildings to save energy hits climate and pockets

A big offender is the Coombe Women’s Hospital. Its energy use has rocketed by 89% since 2009 writes Victoria White

JUST as a UK report shows that our proposed Climate and Low Energy Bill has “critical weaknesses”, the first report on energy use in our public buildings shows that 60% of them are not achieving the required savings.

Since 2009, when our bust economy desperately needed savings in the public sector, we burned €100m a year by stupidly turning the heating up too high, leaving computers on all night and failing to invest in proper insulation.