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Energy and expenses

The rising costs of energy pose as an ever-greater challenge to us as individuals, employees and the University of Göttingen as an institution. Things such as rising utility bills that affect us all as tenants or homeowners affect the university as well.

The university and its facility management are continuously working to manage energy consumption and rising energy costs. In doing so, we are in particular dependent on you as members of the university. After all, you are the ones who can use energy responsibly, environmentally consciously and economically. You are also the ones who need to identify potential savings and make suggestions for improvement. Without your help, all our efforts will have little effect in the end.

This page is intended to give ideas on how you can help to reduce energy consumption and limit the cost explosion through your own behaviour. This starts with small measures at the workplace and ends with major technical or structural changes. We look forward to receiving what we hope will be an extremely large number of creative suggestions from you.
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Current energy saving measures

Many monitors are operated on campus to display room occupancies, as well as other information and advertising. Monitors operated by the university itself (e. g. at the Hochschulsport Göttingen) have always been switched off during the closing times of the buildings. However, we have now reached an agreement with our partners Unicum TV and Campus Service GmbH to also remotely switch off their monitors between 9 pm and 8 am. Moreover, both partners want to implement the remote switch-off at other universities throughout Germany.

The German federal government's ordinance on securing the energy supply via measures effective in the short term (EnSikuMaV) aims, among other things, to lower the air temperature in public non-residential buildings. A maximum of 19 °C air temperature applies to offices. You can find out more about implementation at the university here mehr.

The use of fan heaters and oil radiators is only permitted at the university in exceptional cases that have been approved in advance. A list of exceptional cases is maintained by the facility management. Oil radiators were issued to provide heating for individual rooms in the case of exceptional permits for work during the shutdown ("coal vacations"). They are NOT used for regular heating, as the electricity consumption is disproportionately high. The power consumption of fan heaters is generally even higher and the fire risk posed by such devices is also very high. Therefore, the use of fan heaters is prohibited at the University. This applies in particular to privately purchased devices.

We would like to draw your attention to the fact that university employees can be held personally liable for damages that may result from the operation of such devices. This applies not only to fire damage but also to damage caused by overloading of the power supply system. It is possible for overloads to blow fuses and cause electrical blackouts. This can damage building infrastructure. If research projects are disrupted or research materials damaged as a result, the damage amounts can also become substantial. The deployment of employees to remedy faults would then also be charged.

If you have any questions about this, please contact the energy controlling at energie@uni-goettingen.de.

The swimming pool at the Hochschulsport Göttingen will not be heated in the winter semester 2022/23, therefore the water will have a temperature of approximately 20 °C. It is still possible to use the swimming pool, though courses cannot take place there. You can find more info here: https://my.sport.uni-goettingen.de/blog/energie/


More information

Contact

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Division GM22
Division GM32_EN
energie@uni-goettingen.de