Zero Carbon Forum members tackle the mounting energy crisis and deliver carbon reduction with ‘Save While you Sleep’ initiative

‘Save While You Sleep’ officially launches to reduce energy waste and recover lost profits 

21st July 2022: With energy prices predicted to continue to rocket across all sectors, the social enterprise and forum founder, Zero Carbon Services, today officially launched its ‘Save While you Sleep’ programme to help hospitality reduce costs, recover lost profits and cut carbon overnight. 

Côte and Stonegate Group are the latest organisations to sign up to the programme, which has been trialling with some Zero Carbon Forum members since last year, including: Fridays, Burger King and McMullens. Trials have realised energy savings worth £6,000 and avoided 8 tonnes of CO2, per outlet, being emitted; the same as 17,000 car miles. 

The launch also comes following the UK’s first ever red warning for exceptional heat this week with record breaking temperatures reaching over 40C. The consequence of this extreme heat has seen hospitality equipment from fridges to air conditioning systems surge in energy usage.  

Data from Zero Carbon Services revealed that during this week, average watts usage was up by 153kWh; equating to £29 a week in extra energy costs and 30kg of extra carbon per site, impacting planet and profits and emphasising the need for organisations to be actively measuring, and reducing, energy wastage day and night.  

The programme works by combining energy and carbon analytics with operational training and ongoing coaching. Existing energy smart meter data is run through Zero Carbon Services’ proprietary intelligence platform, to identify energy wastage every day. Dedicated ‘Carbon Coaches’ provide analysis, insight coaching and training and on and off-site support to report high wastage sites, identify key causes, help with remedial actions, and benchmark performance. Operations teams are supported to achieve their ‘best ever’ usage every night. 

Mark Chapman, founder and CEO of the Zero Carbon Forum said: “This initiative is a great example of how cutting carbon can cut costs and that the solutions to the climate crises can help operators sustain the current cost pressures. We realise that operators need the support to identify and engage Operations teams week on week to recover these lost profits and protect against soaring energy costs.   

“With ongoing operational team support and guidance businesses can quickly start to see demonstrable and immediate cost and energy savings. The cheapest energy is the energy you don’t use and with an average of £6,000 in wasted energy a year per operator site, just by leaving equipment on overnight - in a time of crisis - this programme we hope, will go some way to helping hospitality stay on its feet, while acting in a more sustainable way.”  

Simon Chester, Commercial Director at Côte said: “The Save While You Sleep programme from Zero Carbon Services is never more needed than now. Côte operates 84 restaurants across the UK and with this initiative in action we have predicted that Cote will save an estimated 500 tonnes of CO2 and see a 6% reduction in overnight energy costs over the coming year.” 

Suzanne Baker, Commercial Director at Stonegate Group said: “Stonegate is committed to reducing energy consumption and our carbon footprint and this programme further helps us towards the goal of reaching net zero. It’s a programme that our colleagues can get on board with in an easy-to-understand way, which is vital to our organisation at every level of operations.”

For more information visit: https://zerocarbonforum.com/ and https://savewhileyousleep.world 

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Editors notes

About the Zero Carbon Forum  

The Zero Carbon Forum is a non-profit organisation which builds on 10 years of carbon reduction collaboration in the UK’s hospitality and Brewing sector. It enables members to reach their decarbonisation targets faster, more efficiently and more cost effectively than acting alone. 

Members pledge to work collaboratively, by sharing carbon reduction plans and initiatives. By combining expertise and resources the forum helps to identify all possible actions to decarbonise operations across tens of thousands of outlets and their supply chains.  

In October 2021 the Zero Carbon Forum published its publicly available roadmap for hospitality to achieve net zero carbon, closely followed by the launch of the Overnight Energy programme from Zero Carbon Services; an impactful two-stage ‘10-minute’ shutdown process, combined with analytics from members’ energy smart meters to achieve substantial cost reductions and reduce emissions.  

In April 2022 the forum launched a Carbon Calculator and Toolkit, developed in collaboration with UKHospitality, BBPA, and powered by Sky, which enables hospitality operators and brewers to calculate their carbon footprint and identify achievable key actions to reduce emissions.  

The Zero Carbon Forum is endorsed by government and backed by trade associations UK Hospitality and the British Beer and Pub Association. Members include leading UK and global hospitality organisations including Brewdog, Burger King UK, Côte Restaurant Group, Greene King, InterContinental Hotels (IHG) Hotels & Resorts, , KFC, Nando's UK and IRE, Pizza Express and Revolution Bars. 

For more information visit: https://zerocarbonforum.com/ and https://savewhileyousleep.world