What's the Big Green Solution?
Come inside the Big Green Room to find out more.
What are you waiting for?
Pressures to cut costs and reduce our environmental impacts have never been so immense; with more electrification of heating and transport systems, for example, energy prices are likely to increase significantly unless we massively bring down our existing energy consumption.
The Climate Action Tracker tracks the climate change action of different country contributions against the globally agreed Paris Agreement: "We all need to do much more."
For the Net Zero 'Win for All', we need to live up to a number of unchanging fundamental qualities in everything we do. In general terms, we have structured these as the '5-Rs' - to Review, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Rethink.
This is about doing the right thing, taking responsibility and all of us continually exploring more ways to make improvements to make every consuming process better - guided our practical courses and forums.
BigGreenAcademy brings together different professions, from different organizations and from around the world so we can all work more closely together and make a bigger difference, a place where we learn from each other.
We all need to make big cuts in emissions by 2030
Meet some of the people involved
James Brittain
Principal, Energy & Sustainability
supporting and leading up change in energy and sustainability across many organizations. He's an engineer with a passion for doing better by combining people and technical solutions - that's the mission of his business the Discovery Mill.
James is also a Lead Trainer for the Energy Institute, MSc Module Leader for London City University, Consultant Editor for Croneri, a regular contributor to industry conferences and head judge for international awards.
He lives in South-West England with his wife and two children and regularly experiments with new ideas to live and breathe better sustainability at home too.
Monica Landoni
Academy Coordinator
degrees in Energy & Environmental Technologies and International Economics. At work, she helps organizations and people take advantage of incentives for better energy and environmental performance.
She’s very enthusiastic and passionate about our vision and mission, seeing it as a great opportunity to make a difference by working more closely together.
Monica has worked on energy and water improvement reviews and supporting audits for organizations to help meet the European Energy Efficiency Directive requirements.
Monica keeps working to become a better sustainability specialist.
John Mason
Communications & Ideas
rallying everyday champions at work and communicating what makes an idea worth believing in - indeed Ingenious Ideas is the name of his company!
Along with James, John originally created the Big green concept and the approach for the first series of Big green events. Over the years, he has added in creativity across the full media spectrum – online and offline, awareness-building and more results-driven.
Probing for hidden meanings, discovering insights and contributing to successful integrated campaigns are what he does best.
He continues to provide strategic input to everything we do.
Alun Otley
Building services systems
services for large complex facilities. His involvement with us started when he acted as lead energy champion delivering record 30%+ energy savings for his organization. He is now also very much an energy specialist too!
He offers strong technical and organizational skills to support the Big Green enterprise. Through his business ARO Consulting, he works with teams to design and optimize engineering systems to deliver overall performance improvement. Alun believes that investment targeting the ‘Win Win’ is the key way to deliver in today’s increasingly challenging world.
Alun lives in the Czech Republic.
Beverley Lister
Environmental Impact
and higher education sectors, Beverley is an environmental specialist who has worked with some of the largest projects around - see Beverley Lister Associates
She shares her 25+ years’ experience spanning sustainable design and fit-out, to delivery of on-site environmental programs and operational environmental management systems. She's amazing at helping setting realistic objectives for organizations to maintain momentum.
Beverley has a keen interest in permaculture design and gardening. In 2020, she established a nurture farm of small breeds for local children called Huckleberries.
Andy Dobbs
Projects
in process development, continuous improvement, line management and project management.
He follows the Big Green aims and is passionate about helping people help themselves. His business AcuFire is a specialist in compliance, including for energy and environmental management.
Andy has over 25 years’ experience undertaking various roles within engineering, energy and performance improvement teams up to a Senior Manager level. He is 6 Sigma qualified and uses techniques such as lean, 8D and 5S to facilitate projects and develop skills and performance.
Michael O'Neill
Forums Coordinator
and sustainability champion. For the Big Green Academy, he’s a coordinator for day-to-day communications within our forums.
For Mike, the secret to better overall performance is through collaboration and leadership to motivate and involve everyone in turning big ideas into big actions.
He sees a big opportunity for the Academy to share how we can successfully save energy by engaging colleagues and communicating across boundaries.
Mike is a former naval officer with a knack for translating strategic goals into concrete actions and achieving continual process improvement.
Praveen Bandara
Affiliates Coordinator
with outreach to Australia, Praveen is currently managing the facilities and services for a Commercial office complex.
With a focus on sustainability and people, and degrees in energy, it is his firm belief that changing our behaviors and habits is what will deliver better sustainability developments and meaningful progress in the fight against dangerous climate change.
Praveen sees working with others as the big opportunity for the Big Green Academy. He loves supporting us in engaging people to share ideas, ask questions and find solutions for everyday challenges within the community forums.
Bettine Larsen
Associate
Bettine has a special interest with degrees in Energy & Environmental technology and Business with Finance.
She is passionate about learning and developing skills, particularly for better sustainability. She’s loves the way the Big Green Academy aims to help everyone do the same.
Bettine firmly believes that as individuals, each of us drive societal change and have the opportunity to contribute to a better future in every way we can.
Bettine is particularly interested in better construction and using procurement standards and processes to make it happen.
Our Story - How the Big Green Concept was Born
The “Big Green” concept was born out of success of working with different teams across a UK airport from 2007 to 2010.
Our aim was to bring together different teams and business partners to collaborate more locally within their respective communities within the airport.
Initially there was no capital money available for investing in energy and environmental improvement projects so we had the opportunity to try out lots of different people-based solutions and ideas.
After three years working across the whole airport, we massively surprised ourselves with the teams delivering an average of 15% savings across all buildings and infrastructure; the best areas were saving more than 30%.
The focus was initially on energy as this is where the biggest business benefits often are. Over the four years, we also targeted water, waste streams and renewable energy investments, all in context of better sustainability.
Regular workshops and events helped turn discovery into success. Directors reinforced key priorities, celebrated industry awards and were confident in letting everyday champions lead it all up locally for themselves.
Success is very much down to the everyday champions involved.
We've been privileged to have continued to work with the airport applying the same techniques to other applications such as development projects, retail and commercial business partners over the last decade. See our Case-study '10+ years of energy management through people'.
What’s Happened Since?
Since 2010, led by the Discovery Mill, we have been working with a select band of different client organizations to support, and help energize, step change in their energy and sustainability performance using simple hands-on solutions.
Over the last decade or so, we have run Big Green events, developed Big Green apps, led training programs and helped a wide variety of different organizations develop their strategies for their energy & sustainability improvement.
We have worked with schools, hospitals, airports, universities, government estates, facilities management service partners, development design teams, commercial businesses, retail, tourism businesses, medical specialists, manufacturing and logistics organizations, and many others; with operations and estates reaching across the world.
We have found whatever the sector, and country, generally the same fundamental principles apply.
In 2021, with the Covid-19 epidemic, we took the opportunity to take stock. Going forward we all need to be able to work better virtually and in person, while bringing benefits to ourselves as well as our organizations.
BigGreenAcademy was born to help extend the reach and diversity of the people involved. This will enable us all to share more of our experiences and ideas, make use of online courses and make a bigger difference by learning from each other.