Recently, the MRC published an impact report for the MRC’s sustainability programme for 2024-2025, showcasing progress, challenges, and future plans to achieve net zero and improve environmental practices. Below is the section of the report that covers sustainability work at the Mary Lyon Centre.
The past twelve months have been exciting at MRC Harwell, with big environmental sustainability projects starting to get underway, and with others in design. The Green Group, which was set up in late 2023, has evolved and started to deliver positive impacts across the facility.
Biodiversity has been a big focus on site this year. In response to the MRC biodiversity strategy, a nature recovery plan (NRP) was published in January, after almost 12 months of baseline surveys of vegetation, pollinators, and other invertebrates. The NRP gives the basis of the improvements that will be made to improve species diversity and abundance, with a number of recommendations from the report already being introduced. The surveys have given an important baseline in their own right, with 172 species recorded on site!
We have worked with our grounds maintenance contractor to reduce the mowing of around half of the overall grassed areas of the site to only once per year. This has seen an explosion of wildflowers, including three species of orchid on the site, which have self-seeded into the resulting meadowland. This habitat will be enhanced further by the recent installation of log piles, bee hotels, seeding, and bulb planting, which will provide homes for pollinators, other invertebrates, and small mammals. New bird boxes on site will provide nesting places for robins, starlings, swifts, and kestrels.
The biggest single biodiversity project was the construction of a large pond in the northwest of the site in January 2025. The pond has been planted with native aquatic and marginal planting, and it is hoped that it will attract amphibians, water birds, and invertebrates such as dragonflies and damselflies, as it matures.
Three large construction projects to decarbonise the estate were undertaken in 2024-25. The first of these was the roof replacement and insulation on Building 383. This is part of a wider decarbonisation project, which will ultimately see all of the roof, windows, and doors replaced, and external wall insulation applied to the whole building to make it ready for heat pumps to replace the gas boilers. The first two phases of roof upgrades, alone, will reduce emissions from the building by 30 tCO2e/a.
The early months of 2025 saw two solar PV systems, totalling 697kWp (around 1,600 individual solar panels!) of generating capacity, installed on the roofs of the Mary Lyon Centre and Advance Training Centre. These systems will reduce emissions from the two buildings by around 130tCO2e/a.
Both the solar PV and the fabric efficiency improvements are being designed into a decarbonisation plan that is aligned to the switch from gas to electrically fuelled heating, hot water, and steam provision. Much of the feasibility and design work to reduce demand and design the future air source heat pump systems has been undertaken over the past year. This is critical to the decarbonisation of the estate, with the first heating system, in Building 383 planned to be switched to heat pumps in 2027-28, with enabling work to be carried out in the run up.
Other feasibility and design work has included the planning for new electrically fuelled autoclaves, reducing the demand from individually ventilated cages, and feeding into the design of a BREEAM Excellent and net zero building for the new security lodge on site.
