Eco Church: Buildings and Energy

As we begin our Lenten journey exploring our ongoing work towards an Eco Office Silver award and beyond, this week we turn our attention to Buildings and Energy.

Following our move to new Church House premises, we have been looking deeply at the five Eco Church categories, as we work to embed environmental consideration in all we do.

The Buildings and Energy category invites us to understand the spaces we inhabit for worship and work. It does not begin with major projects or immediate updates, but with knowing the basics – how the building functions, how it is used, and the energy and resources it consumes.

While you are thinking about your buildings and energy usage, it’s a good opportunity to submit your Energy Footprint Tool (EFT) for 2026 through the Parish Returns system. Completing the EFT is a pre-requisite for accessing national grants that could support fabric repairs and upgrades that aid decarbonisation.

The Eco Church survey questions for this section are mostly qualitative, and the Church House team does not see individual survey answers. They are designed to help you reflect honestly on where you are now and what your next steps might be.

At Church House, we found the Buildings and Energy section of our Eco Office Silver award application one of the more challenging areas. It contains the largest number of questions, and therefore it required gathering information from multiple people. While the EFT requires measurable data such as utility bills, the Eco Church survey questions are more about awareness and practice. They mainly require you to answer with yes, partly, or no – for example, ‘Our church building(s) walls, roof(s) and floor spaces are insulated’.

We found that every fact-finding conversation further embedded sustainability principles within our shared life and work, and actually, the value lay as much in the discussion as in the answers recorded.

Here are some tips to get started with this section of the survey:

As you complete your fact-finding, make a list of items you are leaving for later. In Church House, we don’t have a climate resilience plan yet (question 14), and the building doesn’t have a “safe spaces” policy (question 28). But this hasn’t stopped us from applying for our Silver award. The important thing is taking a step in the right direction; at the end of the day, it may not matter which step you take first.
When speaking with people, keep it personal and local. Many of us have been surprised that climate change is no longer something happening somewhere else. 75% of people in the UK are either anxious or very anxious about climate change, and at the same time many people don’t feel they know much about it. If you are worried about the conversation turning political, refer to what we can agree on: we have been called by God to be stewards, we agree we can do better, and we are empowered to play a role through our own choices.

5 minute challenge: Next time you are sitting in church, make a moment of calm and thank God for the many people, past and present, who have been involved in maintaining the fabric of the building.

30 minute challenge: Start a conversation about energy efficiency after a church service, or submit your Energy Footprint Tool for 2026. Let others know that you have taken a positive step for your church’s future.

Half a day challenge: Bring the Eco Church survey along to your next church work morning (if you have one) and explore it together, or write an article about it for your parish newsletter, sharing why Buildings and Energy matter as part of discipleship and witness.

Our buildings can represent centuries of prayer in one place. They have been sustained by generations who worked faithfully with the knowledge and resources available to them. We now live in the Information Age, with unprecedented access to information about energy use, carbon emissions, and our environmental impact. Our predecessors did not have the benefit of our current knowledge and resources, yet they were committed with the means they had; we too should be committed with the means that we now have. Understanding our buildings is part of honouring their history, and stewarding their future.