City news: Science and Industry Museum secures £4.3m to secure sustainable future

Manchester’s Science and Industry Museum has secured £4.3m in funding to help it secure a sustainable future, transforming it from a key venue of the industrial revolution to a future landmark of the green revolution.

Provided by the government’s Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme, this new funding will help the venue place zero-carbon technology at the heart of visitor experience, with original infrastructure resurrected to reach higher levels of sustainability. Back in the 1800s, a well was built in what is now the lower floor of the venue’s Grade I listed warehouse to harness the power of ground water . Using their newly secured funding, the museum will bring this well back to life via the installation of a new water source heat pump network using the latest green technologies.

£2.6m will be used to enable the venue’s power hall to reduce its CO2 emissions by 60% by 2030 through new roof insulation and glazing, an electric boiler and water source heat pumps to sustainably power its historic engines. Meanwhile, £1.7m will go towards making the museum’s entire heating system electric, adding LED lighting to its historic 1830 warehouse and a new building management system to control and monitor the venue’s overall energy use.

Combining the original and modern, these funds will ultimately help catalyse the museum’s goal of placing zero-carbon technology at the core of its visitor experience. By the time the work is complete, the Science and Industry Museum aims to have reduced its annual CO2 emissions by 515 tonnes – which is the equivalent of the yearly output of over thirty UK homes.