tec helps coleg gwent buy ‘green’

Background

Coleg Gwent is the largest further education (FE) college in Wales and one of the largest in the UK; it has five campuses and two outreach Learn-IT centres. It offers a wide range of general education courses, vocational education and training programmes across all programme areas. The college also works in partnership with the five local authorities to deliver adult education through a franchise arrangement with each.

The college is committed to improving its environmental performance and in 2010 became only one of three FE institutions in Wales to achieve Level 5 of the Green Dragon Environmental Standard.

The Business Challenge

Coleg Gwent was very keen to purchase as much ‘green’ electricity as it could and was first introduced to The Energy Consortium (TEC) in 2007 through the Welsh FE purchasing consortium. The fact that TEC could procure sustainable electricity and had a thorough knowledge of the education sector were both driving factors in the decision by Coleg Gwent to sign up to fixed price fixed term contracts on both gas and electricity through TEC. The college consumes more than 15.8GWh/year.

The Business Solution

In the first year that the college switched from its central Government supplier to TEC it was able to demonstrate significant savings 6.8%. Since then it has continued to make annual cost savings, helped in part by a policy to simultaneously reduce energy consumption. In 2009/10 it reduced the college’s energy consumption by 4.1% on the previous year.

The Business Benefits

The college wanted to know how to manage costs over the period of the contract and being a Member and customer of TEC means that when the contract is up for renewal, Coleg Gwent is contacted by TEC and advised when the best time is to go to tender. Using the Utilyx system, the college finds it easy to identify when to go to auction. Through the work with TEC and other environmental, social and economic initiatives, Coleg Gwent has been able to achieve Level 4 of the Welsh Assembly Governments ‘Sustainable Procurement Assessment Framework’.

Client Quote

"We rely on TEC to research and advise the best time to go to tender and we’re extremely grateful for its helpful advice and sector knowledge and I’d happily recommend its service to any organisation"

- Eira Miles, Procurement Manager, Coleg Gwent