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Cutting Office Energy Use and Carbon Emissions In a Move Towards Green Real Estate

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The UK government set some fairly tough goals for the reduction of energy use and carbon emissions with targets to reduce emissions by 35% by 2020.

The good news, on the face of it, is that the country is well on the way to meeting those targets, with the emissions for 2009 significantly lower than for the preceding year. The figures record an 8.7 per cent drop across a basket of measured emissions and 9.8 per cent lower for carbon dioxide.

Digging into the numbers a bit more suggests the reason for this and it is not because of a dramatic improvement in energy efficiency. Industrial process show a drop of more than thirty six per cent with energy production, business, transport and residential all showing a decrease in emissions as well. These across the board drops coincide with a marked decrease in the economy and as such it is most likely that emissions have dropped because less is being produced than because there has been a correspondingly sharp improvement in efficiency.

But that does not mean that as the economy grows, carbon emissions should grow at the same rate. Investing in low carbon policies, procedures and technology now should have both economic and environmental benefits in the long term. This will particularly be the case as fuel costs continue to rise and the payback period of installing new technology falls.

Times of change are good opportunities to implement environmental changes throughout a business however if your company is in a state of consolidation there may be no appetite to spend money now even with a prospect of saving later on. If this is the case there are still steps that can be taken to save energy and reduce emissions from your offices.

Firstly see what manual processes you can put in place to ensure lights are not left on unnecessarily at the end of the day. Is it possible to group staff who work similar hours in a common location so that you are not heating and lighting empty areas.

Make sure staff turn off computers and screens when not in use and that equipment with energy saving functions have these features turned on.

If your office is air conditioned, ensure the system is well maintained and properly balanced. Have staff regulate their temperature with extra layers rather than having one part of an office very hot and another very cold as this will cause the air conditioning plant to work harder than it needs, using more energy and creating more emissions.

By engaging with staff there is the opportunity to save energy and money and creating a greener office, without significant cost.

Contact us today and see how we can help reduce your energy consumption and cost accross your office properties.

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