How Spurs, Delia and Tate Modern are facing up to the 10:10 challenge

New floodlights for Tottenham Hotspur, long johns for Delia Smith and Thames riverwater for the Tate
Interviews by Alok Jha, Leo Hickman and David Adam
The Guardian, Tuesday 1 September 2009
Compared with other working days at the White Hart Lane stadium, match days are in another league of energy use. Which makes things a bit tricky for Tottenham Hotspur as it tries to work out whether it will make its 10:10 target. While executive director Donna-Maria Cullen is keen to make her club a green beacon, she's also keeping her fingers crossed for a run of FA Cup matches this season. In football, success can be a real hindrance to being green.
But Cullen has already got the club working on cutting its carbon footprint. One of the most energy-hungry parts of a stadium is its lighting: sun lamps must be trained on the pitch all winter to keep the grass in pristine condition and, for evening matches, floodlights are a necessity. Last year the club spent more than £100,000 replacing the 136 floodlamps, each 2KW, with more efficient 1.5KW lamps.
The carbon footprint of fans on match days has also been reduced by dissuading them from arriving in cars (around a quarter now arrive by car, down from a peak of 36%). For 10:10, Cullen wants to focus on the day-to-day business side: everything from making sure kettles are not over-filled in the offices to turning down temperatures in the constantly-running laundry at the training ground.
And the players? Will any give up their Land Rovers and Jaguars? "We'll be asking them to buy into it and do their bit," says Cullen. The team captain, Ledley King, is due to make an appearance at the 10:10 launch, and Cullen is confident he won't be the only player there.
She says the club signed up to 10:10 because it's a climate campaign that can really achieve something. "We have millions of supporters so, apart from addressing our own footprint, we're an excellent conduit for getting the message out. Any business that isn't taking cognisance of the fact that this is probably the biggest challenge facing us all is being very short-sighted."
Delia Smith
Last year Delia Smith, the cookery writer and broadcaster, decided to conduct a little experiment. She popped down to her local Marks & Spencer, bought herself some long johns and thermal vests, then headed back home to her cottage set deep in the Suffolk countryside. Smith was intrigued to see how much energy – and money — she could save by wearing extra layers of clothing.
"We pay our electricity bills via direct debit so the same amount goes out each month," she says. "So I was really pleased when my electricity company sent me a cheque for £300 this spring because I'd managed to cut down so much on our energy use."
Despite the success of this experiment, Smith is frustrated by the lack of information on offer for people wanting to reduce their carbon footprint. "I've bought several books and I'll look up, say, smokeless coal versus conventional coal in terms of carbon emissions and it won't tell me anything. I'm trying to do my best, but I know there's lots more I could do."
Smith's house has no central heating; it relies on electric heaters, a fireplace in the sitting room, underfloor heating in the conservatory and an oil-fired Aga in the kitchen. "I know there are questions over the efficiency of Agas," she says. "But, again, where do we get this information? I'm totally willing to not have the Aga if someone educates me about its impact."
For heating hot water, Smith and her husband, the publisher Michael Wynn-Jones, have an electric immersion heater. As a complete package, it's among the most inefficient ways to heat space and water in a home. Huge savings in emissions could be achieved by installing a modern condensing gas-fired boiler. Or better still, a boiler fired on wood pellets.
Smith has already improved the insulation of their six-room cottage. "I've been trying very hard since last year. Everything is insulated now – as much as you can with an old cottage. We've got double glazing and a thatched roof, which is fantastic: cool in the summer and warm in winter. We have more to do but, because we're both over 60, we can now get it done for free."
Smith is particularly proud of what they have done outside, including a pond given over to wildlife and the planting of 300 trees. But it's the two cars parked outside the cottage that leads to my next line of inquiry. Smith has a Renault Clio "to pop down to the local shops"; Wynn-Jones has a Jaguar.
"We're not on a bus route so we have to use the car," she says. "When it's time for me to change, though, I will get a greener one. And although I'd be happy not to have the Jaguar, we've both found we are able to work in it – you can read and write comfortably. So it's for longer distances."
As directors of Norwich football club, Smith and Wynn-Jones travel to all the team's away matches. It is here that perhaps their greatest emissions vice is revealed: "We go to away matches on an eight-seater propellor plane. But how," she asks, "does that compare, in terms of emissions, to four cars going with two people in each?" Smith promises to find out the model of the aircraft so I can make that calculation.
She also admits to taking around two flights a year on holiday. "We don't actually like flying for holidays. We hate the whole airport experience, and have recently had several holidays in the car, going through the tunnel or on the ferry into Europe."
But it is over food, as you might expect, that Smith displays the greatest passion. She quickly interrupts my suggestion that meat and dairy both carry a significant emission burden. "If you put Britain under siege conditions, it wouldn't be able to feed itself without meat because we are mostly hill country. Yes I'd like to have less intensively reared meat, but there is a lot of meat that isn't and it's the same with dairy."
Instead, Smith steers the blame on to processed foods. "I don't know how many emissions are produced making a million and one different types of chocolate bar – it's totally superfluous to what we need. I'm not a killjoy, but people are knocking meat and dairy and not talking about all the processed junk food."
Smith accepts there are many areas of her life where impressive reductions could be made to her carbon footprint, and says she's ready and keen to take up the 10:10 challenge. But what, I wonder, will she find hardest to cut back on? "I could easily do without ever going to an airport again. That would probably be the easiest thing to give up if I had to."
The Tate group
The giant turbine hall at Tate Modern in central London hums with electricity. In its former life this hall was a cathedral to fossil fuels; now it is the centrepiece of the 10:10 campaign that aims to undo some of the damage those fuels have caused to the atmosphere. The campaign's official launch party is hosted here tonight.
The turbine hall looks like it should have a gigantic carbon footprint. Just how much must it cost to heat this cavernous space? Not a penny, as it turns out: the hall is left unheated in winter and uncooled in summer. Staff on duty in the colder months work shorter shifts and are encouraged to wrap up.
But sensitive paintings in the rest of the museum must be kept under precisely controlled conditions, and this is where the building's carbon footprint starts to mount. The relative humidity is kept within 40% and 60%, and the temperature must not exceed 24C. The same goes for the rest of the Tate galleries around the country. Judith Nesbitt, chief curator at Tate Britain, says: "Our biggest energy load is electricity for climate control of the galleries, and we are looking at how to reduce that burden."
Outside Tate Modern, at the top of the long ramp leading from the turbine hall, an industrial looking pipe has been crudely wedged into the ground, as part of an experiment into whether water from the Thames gravel beds below could be used to help cool the museum's sensitive artworks. Museum experts are also looking so see if waste heat from the transformer next door could be tapped. The trials aren't just about improving the energy efficiency of the iconic building; the museum plans to build a £215m extension next door for 2012, which it says will use 54% less energy and emit 44% less carbon than building regulations demand.
The organisation is taking other steps to curb electricity use. Away from the public spaces, lights have been made motion sensitive, and the gallery lights at Tate Britain now switch off automatically in the evening. But Nesbitt says they are less able to tackle the group's emissions from air travel. "We borrow and lend each others' works. This is what we do."
Helen Beeckmans, head of communications at Tate, says the group was already working to reduce its environmental impact before it got involved in 10:10. "Part of the reason we are participating is that we want to communicate outside the museum sector on this subject. The cultural sector has seen enormous growth over recent years, bringing it a high profile – and with that, the responsibility to take a lead in wider issues of society."