The National Museum of Ireland has won an SEAI Energy Award 2024 for significantly reducing natural gas usage, electricity consumption and CO2 emissions in 2023 and 2024.
The SEAI Energy Awards, now in their 21st year, showcase excellence in sustainable energy and celebrate individuals and organisations that are leading the way with innovative sustainable energy solutions and practices.
The National Museum was the overall winner in the category for 'Sustainability via Digital Technologies in Construction and Buildings'.
The category recognises organisations that have demonstrated achievements in the use of digital technology to reduce the carbon emissions of a building.
The National Museum used digital technology to enhance energy efficiency, achieving a 32% reduction in natural gas usage, a 12% reduction in electricity consumption, and a 28% decrease in CO2 emissions within just 18 months.
Outlining the National Museum's win in the category, the SEAI stated:
The Museum implemented an innovative Internet of Things (IoT) based Energy Monitoring System transforming its approach to energy management. It has identified over 100 energy-saving opportunities with minimal capital investment.
This digital transformation offers a cost-effective solution for ongoing energy monitoring. It also fosters greater engagement and awareness among staff and management. The success of this initiative has increased participation in NMI's Green Team boosting their Climate Action Roadmap.
NMI's efforts serve as a model for other public bodies by showcasing how digital innovation can drive substantial energy savings and can help mobilise stakeholders and support Ireland's sustainability goals.
Aoife Hurley, Director of Operations, and Niall Brady, Energy Manager, National Museum of Ireland, attended the awards ceremony on 15 November. Speaking after the awards, Ms Hurley stated:
As part of our Green Team programme and Climate Action Roadmap, one of the key initiatives taken over the last 20 months was to introduce new energy saving measures and operational changes, to achieve significant reductions in our energy usage and CO2 emissions.
We are on our way to achieving our climate action 2030 targets - reducing our carbon emission by 30 per cent in 2023, and likely through this year’s efforts to achieve a further 25 per cent reduction in 2024.
Sustainability is a core principle of the National Museum of Ireland and a key lens in our strategic plan. Like most organisations, we have many challenges ahead to reach our ambitious climate action goals but we are thrilled to collect this SEAI Energy Award which acknowledges our progress so far and shows that the National Cultural Institutions can demonstrate leadership in this area."
Niall Brady, Energy Manager, outlines below what has been involved in developing the Museum's Energy Awareness Digital Transformation Project.
"Managing energy use and performance has always been a challenge for cultural institutions like the National Museum of Ireland, with its large and diverse range of buildings and locations.
"Understanding the performance of our major energy assets is key to meeting our 2030 carbon reduction goals.
It was this challenge which launched the Museum's digital transformation project in January 2023, covering over 100 energy assets in 30 buildings across seven national sites.
"To gather the necessary performance information the Museum chose to exploit the emerging technologies around 0G low power communications, and affordable internet of thing sensing devices. These devices, which use the IoT (Internet of Things) require very little set-up or ongoing maintenance - rightly earning their 'drop and forget' devices name tag, where, once enabled on site, they start to immediately push data several times an hour up to the cloud.
"This low bandwidth capability, once deployed en masse, turns out to be more than adequate to build a very good picture of the NMI estate.
"Now the Museum has installed over 50 of these IoT devices, covering all its sites. Data from these devices, feeds into a central dashboard providing near real time performance of all the NMI’s key assets – boilers, chillers, refrigeration units, and larger pump sets.
"This helps NMI management and Facilities Management to view real-time performance and to help better inform decisions around required interventions e.g. spotting when a system fails or runs continually or shows high unexplained demand.
"To date the heightened levels of energy awareness that this solution has given us, and the subsequent energy saving opportunities that have now topped 100, has yielded an overall natural gas saving of 43% and an electrical energy saving of over 30%. And so, the adoption of this technology has been truly transformative for the Museum.
"And crucially, this new detailed overview of the Museum's energy usage was all achieved within a six-month period, with minimal physical infrastructural interference or modification, and at a cost of less than €10k.
"The technology used for the National Museum of Ireland digital adoption project could work for (and serve to compliment) any business or institution, and as such should offer a positive message on how “to move the dial”, and to help museums, cultural organisations or any organisation- with a large energy asset estate to meet their own carbon reduction targets. And as an added benefit, running this digital IoT solution continually allows for ongoing assessment to ensure that those hard-earned savings are maintained over time.
The energy awareness journey continues within the National Museum with the next phase of the IoT device rollout focusing on our very large pump estate to allow us to get a deeper understanding of our pumping performance and impacts on our ongoing electrical usage."