Establishing an assessment framework for energy sustainability in prisons: The E-SEAP project

Prison sites are a special type of public buildings or facilities in general that are overlooked by policy makers. The prison size and constant energy use results in excessive energy consumptions, which implies that a focus on such sites is necessary. Most authorities rather focus on the security aspects of prison estates than their energy efficiency, and this is transferred naturally to all members of the prison community, i.e. staff and their families, prisoners and their families and wider community. In this context, the European Sustainable Energy Award for Prisons (E-seaP) is an Intelligent Energy Europe project that deals with the sustainable energy behavior of prison sites in 8 European regions. The main goal is to devise an assessment framework for energy sustainability in prisons using a holistic approach, which takes into consideration not only the building energy management but also the provision for education and training and the wider community impact. This paper presents the adopted assessment framework along with a comparison of energy consumption in 17 prison sites in Europe. The assessment procedure may be adapted for use also in other types of public buildings.