Truro Cathedral Reduces Its Heating

You may notice when you visit the cathedral this winter that it’s not as warm as it usually is, and you’d be right, and for very good reason.

Faced with energy costs which have more than tripled we have had to make decisions on how to manage this as we do not have the funds to cover what would have been an increase of more than £100,000 per year on our energy bills.

We have made two changes that affect how we heat the cathedral this winter. First, we will be lowering the cathedral heating set point by one degree. Second, we will be running the cathedral heating from November until the end of February, a shorter period than normal.

While not directly driving this change in approach to heating the cathedral this change has a clear environmental benefit in reducing our consumption and thus our carbon emissions contributing to our progress towards the Church of England commitment of achieving net zero by 2030.

We appreciate that this may make things less comfortable than they have been in the past. As such we encourage those visiting the cathedral for services and events to wear another ‘layer’ to minimise any possible discomfort.

Please spare a thought for many of our team who work in the cathedral who will be spending a great deal of time in a cooler environment over the winter. Please also spare a thought for the many millions of people across the world who are suffering already from the damaging effects of climate change. Any reduction in carbon emissions that we can make can help to limit the damage climate change is doing across the world.   

Finally, while the changes above will help offset some of the increase in spend on energy, those have more than doubled. Any additional donations/giving you can spare will make a difference in us being able to cover our costs.