Cardiff Met receives national recognition for environmental efforts at Times Higher Education Awards

Cardiff Metropolitan University has received the ‘Outstanding Contribution to Environmental Leadership’ award at this year’s Times Higher Education Awards (THE Awards) 2025 – recognising the University’s dedication to strong, innovative leadership on environmental issues which are transferable across the built environment.

Cardiff Met’s initiative began with space utilisation analysis but revealed transformative sector-wide discoveries about building performance. The University uncovered that its existing buildings consume over half their energy when empty - a pattern now confirmed across 70% of UK universities and 1,700 schools.

In 2023, facing pressure to expand teaching facilities, Cardiff Met initially scoped £5.1m of new teaching spaces. However, by using ‘internet-of-things’ sensors and data analytics, the team revealed the opportunity to increase the use of space. In a sector that added 852,000 m² of floorspace in three years, despite average teaching space utilisation of just 23%, Cardiff Met chose to increase utilisation instead of building more.

The space analysis revealed something unexpected - buildings were consuming approximately half their energy out of hours when many of the academic buildings were largely empty.

Building on this insight, Cardiff Met launched ‘Halve the Half’ - using existing half-hourly meter data to expose where energy is wasted when buildings have limited or no occupancy. By time profiling consumption and ranking buildings, estates staff could prioritise ‘no and low’ cost operational fixes, including adjusting heating schedules, optimising settings and repairing minor faults.

Although energy use was already below benchmark averages, in the first full academic year, compared to the previous year, Cardiff Met’s ‘Halve the Half’ initiative achieved:  

• 3% reduction in gas use
• 5% reduction in electricity use
• 3 GWh total energy reduction (despite new EV charging stations)
• £1,015,000 in combined tariff and consumption savings of which £702k is attributable to consumption reduction
• Also addressed minor water leaks identified during out-of-hours monitoring, reducing water use by 9,776m³ (an 11.3% drop).

These reductions were delivered within existing maintenance budgets with no requirement for significant capital, planning permissions or grid upgrades, creating a rapid self-funding improvement cycle.

Graham Lewis, Chief Officer University Environments at Cardiff Metropolitan University, has been leading on the space utilisation and Halve the Half initiative.

Graham said: “This award is testament to the dedication and forward-thinking within Cardiff Met. Research indicates this pattern repeats across sectors. Our methodology offers a no-and low-cost route for all building owners to reduce cost-and carbon, using infrastructure they already have. Our emerging collaboration seeks to reveal the opportunity for all.”

Cardiff Met is now working with 12 universities on the next stage of the pilot -including all eight Welsh institutions - alongside the Chartered institute of Building, Chartered Institute of Building services Engineers, Association of University Directors of Estates, Energy Sparks, The Energy Consortium and Welsh Energy Service, to develop out-of-hours building benchmarks to reveal the opportunity across a broad range of building types relevant to the whole of the built environment.

President and Vice-Chancellor of Cardiff Metropolitan University, Professor Rachael Langford added: “The Halve the Half initiative has delivered huge benefits across Cardiff Met and is now starting to influence approaches in other universities and organisations in the UK. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone involved in the hard work behind this project - the entire Cardiff Met community is delighted to see you recognised by this prestigious award.”

Now in its 21st year, the THE Awards are a highlight of the academic calendar and celebrate the very best within the Higher Education sector in the UK.  

Previous THE recognition awarded to Cardiff Met includes winning the UK and Ireland University of the Year in 2021, and Outstanding Contribution to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in 2023.