Why London eco club sums don't add up

When the "world's first eco nightclub" opened in London this July, it attracted unqualified plaudits and celebs including Jade Jagger, Coldcut and shadow environment minister Greg Barker. But did Bar Surya deserve the praise? Is it really as green as it claims? To find out, I chatted to the team behind the club and looked at the numbers.

Claim 1: The dancefloor creates 60 per cent of the club's electricity
The piezoelectric dancefloor at Bar Surya uses the pressure of dancing clubbers to generate electricity. The owners have variously claimed the floor provides between 50 and 60 per cent of the entire club's electricity requirement (the 50 figure came from an email Bar Surya sent me, the 60 per cent from its website).

Bar Surya won't say exactly how many kilowatt hours (kWh) the floor generates (kilowatt hours are the standard unit utility companies base electricity charges on). Let's make an educated guess. Club Watt, a new eco club in the Netherlands, has a similar dancefloor and estimates each dancer generates between 5 and 10 watts.

Plasma problem
The dancefloor at Bar Surya is roughly big enough for 60 people. So if 60 people dance for eight hours solid, they'd generate approximately 4.8kWh. Is that 60 per cent of the club's electricity requirements? It's unlikely, and here's why.

Bar Surya has at least four 42 inch plasma screens powered up when the club is open. Even being generous and assuming they're the most efficient models money can buy, those four TVs alone would consume 6.8kWh over eight hours of dancing. In other words, even if I've underestimated the dancefloor's power generation by a third, the TVs would still cancel it out.

And remember, this is a nightclub. In addition to the tellies, it has a sound system, lighting, refrigeration and other appliances drawing electricity.

Nu-NRG
How much electricity does a club use? It's hard to tell. I asked a few London venues but couldn't get an annual kWh figure. Club Watt assumes a club with 180,000 visitors a year consumes 380,000kWh. The average UK home, by contrast, uses 4,700kWh a year. For want of a yardstick, let's assume Bar Surya has 18,000 clubbers through its doors each year, racking up an annual bill of 38,700kWh.

Now, even if 50 people danced non-stop for 365 days a year, they'd only produce 5,256kWh. That would be about 13.6 per cent of the club's electricity consumption.

Of course, all these figures are guesstimates and presume Club Watt's own estimates are correct. But you get the idea: Surya's 60 per cent requires a big stretch of imagination.