(2) what recent progress his Department has made towards the target of increasing its energy efficiency per square metre of its Estate by 15 per cent. by 2010, relative to 1999-2000 levels; and if he will make a statement.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has draught-proofed the windows in our London offices and reduced office heating in the UK from approximately 24°C to a target of 21°C this winter. We are currently undertaking a thermal survey of our UK estate in order to identify further opportunities to reduce heat loss.
In June 2008 we constructed a new information communications technology building at Hanslope Park in Buckinghamshire. This building is a high thermal mass structure, with exposed concrete ceilings that absorb at night the heat generated by the building during the day and selected elevations have solar shading to minimise the heat gain from the sun. The building also contains passive cooling systems using chilled ceiling beams. In winter the building is heated using waste heat recovered by heat exchangers from the data halls.
This building won two Datacentre Leaders Awards for Innovation in 2008. This new building partially replaces three thermally inefficient pre-fabricated buildings which have been decommissioned; a further such building will be decommissioned by the end of 2011.
At Wilton Park measures including repairing window frames, installing thermostatic temperature control valves to radiators and new boiler controls have been taken to improve thermal efficiency.
Information on the worldwide use of electricity, gas and other fuels by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and its agencies in each of the last 10 years is not held centrally and it would not be possible to provide this information without incurring disproportionate cost.
The following table provides all the available data for the UK FCO estate and Wilton Park. FCO services energy usage cannot be extracted from the remainder of the UK FCO estate without incurring disproportionate cost.
1999-2000 2000-01 2001-02 2002-03 2003-04 2004-05 2005-06 2006-07 2007-08 FCO (inc FCO services) Electricity (kWh) 17317198 16395548 17193208 18636612 18717254 19457515 20756930 22578615 23524791 Gas (kWh) n/k 1838096 1663895 1689517 1490484 1616136 1679115 1341891 1153023 Oil (kWh) n/k 2637032 4552078 4503978 4459440 3878744 4732676 3291842 4280027 Heat (kWh) n/k 4365330 5306887 7116929 6475252 6636479 7146240 5290430 5677120 Wilton Park Electricity (kWh) n/k n/k n/k 330000 398716 411676 439213 451972 414771 Gas (kWh) n/k 501626 437841 469730 423842 406431 423272 402785 419166 Oil (Litres) n/k 51198 57230 57310 56500 52900 58088 59412 28000 Woodchip (Tonnes) n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a 130 Notes: 1. Heating for the bulk of the London Estate is supplied by the Whitehall district heating system. 2. Where the value is stated as n/k, the information is not currently available in this format and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost. 3. Where the value is stated as n/a, which refers to woodchip at Wilton Park, this refers to a new facility introduced in 2007-08.