UCL Easter Switch Off 2025 saves the carbon equivalent weight of 1.3 million creme eggs!

The UCL community once again demonstrated our commitment to environmental sustainability through our annual Easter Switch Off campaign. Leading up to the end of Term 2, the efforts of staff and students led to substantial energy savings and a significant reduction in carbon emissions. Congratulations to our champions, the Bartlett School of Architecture and a big shout-out to our individual winners who helped UCL reduce its impact.

Impressive energy and carbon savings

The 2025 Easter Switch Off was a success, with the university achieving a reduction of 264,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) in energy use. This translated into £46,000 in cost savings and a reduction of 52 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO₂) - the weight of over 1.3 million creme eggs. The environmental impact of these savings is comparable to planting approximately 900 trees, highlighting the positive effect of collective action.

Celebrating our competition winners

Staff and students across UCL pledged to switch off as part of the competition. Congratulations to the Bartlett School of Architecture who emerged as the faculty winners! You will receive £50 towards sustainability-related initiatives or events.

Honourable mentions go to the Library Teams, Faculty of Laws, and the Chemistry Department for their outstanding participation.

A congratulations to Ramsay Hall as well for emerging as the best performing accommodation.

This year also featured an individual prize draw, and the winner is:

• Trevor Wan, Faculty of Laws

The winner of the individual prize draw will be contacted by the Sustainable UCL team to arrange collection of your Easter hamper from The Goodness Project!

What action is UCL taking to reduce energy use?

Making our campus more energy-efficient

• Repairing existing and installing more controls for heating, cooling and lighting.
• Working with the Energy Institute and others to link our heating system to on-campus weather stations, helping to better match heating provision with demand.
• Connecting our room bookings system with our heating control system so unoccupied rooms are not heated unnecessarily.
• Undertaking surveys in buildings to implement more LED lighting and improve BMS controls to improve building performance and efficiency.
• Adopting a fabric-first approach for refurbishment and construction projects to ensure less energy is needed from the offset.

Streamlining our operations

• Continuing to work on the management of our buildings, to ensure they are working efficiently, with adjustments to our heating, lighting, and ventilation systems.
• Opening hours of some buildings have been changed to reflect usage patterns. We have worked to ensure that there are no unreasonable impacts on teaching, research, or other business-critical activities. The Student Centre will remain open for 24/7 studying.
• Consolidating our office space by moving all Central Professional Services (PS) teams to Bidborough House.
• Encouraging departments to sign up to Green Impact and LEAF to create efficiencies which lead to energy reductions.

Making improvements to our IT services

• Consolidating data storage into data centres to improve energy efficiency and data security.
• ISD is changing how power for Desktop@UCL computers is managed across campus. It is estimated it will save £500 a day.

Stay in touch

Follow us on social media or sign up to our sustainability newsletters to find out more and be the first to know about the Easter Switch Off!

• Follow us on Twitter/X and Instagram
• Sign up to our Sustainable UCL newsletters 

Savings calculations:

On average, one tree can consume approximately 60kg of CO₂ from the atmosphere.

Carbon savings given are CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent).

Department winner: Calculated by percentage participation per department compared with the percentage energy saving of the department.

Hall winner: Calculated by taking the number of pledges per hall and dividing by the number of current occupied rooms to get a participation percentage.

• The holiday period was from 16/04/25 - 23/04/2025.
• Savings compared to term time = 264,000 kWh.
• Average weekday energy use during term time = 301,236 kWh.
• Average weekday energy use during holidays = 238,706 kWh.
• Average weekend energy use during term time = 262,910 kWh.
• Average weekend energy use during holidays = 236,217 kWh.