Down to work

Businesses are increasingly recognising the benefits of carrying out a workplace carbon footprint assessment and lowering their emissions. Such action not only demonstrates their commitment to sustainability to potential clients and customers, but may win them new business, achieve good publicity and save them money.

Many of the recommendations in this article are simple low-cost strategies that can make significant emissions cuts. If any extra incentive is needed, from 6 April 2008 the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive will require energy performance certificates for the sale, rent or construction of buildings with a floor area greater than 500m2. No mandatory minimum performance has been set, but other in other industries where energy efficiency has become an issue, there has been sharp downturn in demand for inefficient products which suggests that inefficient buildings may experience a fall in their market value.

Click to view the Travel Survey

Click to view the C02 Calculator

This article examines travel and energy use issues in the workplace. It will be followed up in the February issue of BSj with a look at resource efficiency and supply chain issues.

Carrying out a staff travel survey is a good way to gather the basic data and help you assess employees’ views on increasing rail travel, lift sharing, etc. Visit www.bsjonline.co.uk/travelsurvey. The form assesses both commuting and business travel emissions, gauging the relative impact of each area for targeted CO2 reduction.

The most efficient way of cutting commuting emissions is to introduce a home working policy. Crucially, this doesn’t just mean that you’re shifting the CO2 emissions somewhere else. A small research project recently carried out by Hertfordshire University indicated that if you live more than eight miles away from work, you’ll save CO2 by working from home even after allowing for additional heating and other power uses. If you drive a gas-guzzling SUV, the break-even distance drops to a mere three miles.

Companies that increase home working may find that on-site infrastructure can be gradually reduced, and hot-desking can be introduced, reducing energy demand and emissions even further.

Car sharing

Outside cities most staff drive to work, and public transport may not be viable. Get your HR department to assess geographic “clusters” of staff, and then circulate an email to explore interest in car sharing this is also a good way to encourage networking and socialising outside the usual team boundaries. Providing incentives such as book vouchers or cinema tickets will get staff talking and help uptake.

Staff who live close by may consider cycling or even walking in if it’s safe enough. Make contact with your local council to encourage the provision of cycle paths and street lighting, and try establishing a workplace bike pool, or get involved in the Department for Transport’s Cycle to Work scheme (www.dft.gov.uk). This allows employees to easily obtain and then “buy back” bicycles, tax free, via deductions from their monthly pay.

Reducing business travel emissions is more problematic, because the most attractive options from a time and cost perspective are usually the most polluting. The best tactic is to reduce travel frequency via such strategies as tele- and video-conferencing. Teleconferencing equipment is now available for less than £200, so it’s ideal to have in-house, and the UK now has more than 200 bookable video-conferencing rooms. Again, targets and incentives will encourage teams to use such facilities.

For essential face-to-face meetings, avoid air travel in favour of rail or shared car if possible. Adopting energy efficiency at a strategic level – for example, by using a car club instead of offering company cars – can also help reduce emissions. Anecdotal evidence suggests that every shared car typically takes between two and three off the road. The exact carbon benefits of such schemes are being analysed for a Defra-funded report (Measuring Carbon Benefits, www.carplus.org.uk).

Now for the building…

So now you’re lean and green in terms of transport, your staff cycle in each morning on their company bicycles and you’re video-conferencing every chance you get. It’s time to address the building you work in.

To calculate workplace energy use, you’ll need a year’s energy bills – or if you’re in a shared building and pay a flat fee for your electricity, divide by the price per kWh to find an (approximate) kWh usage. Next, use the energy calculator attached to find the annual kg of CO2 emitted by your workplace. Having found your baseline consumption, compare this with the benchmarks given in the accompanying Table 1 these will give you a good practice target to aim for.

The biggest energy users in the office are cooling and heating (60%), office equipment (15%), and lighting (10%). To achieve cost-effective reductions, start with systems: check to ensure that heating and cooling systems aren’t in operation simultaneously, and are only working when occupants can benefit from them. Regular maintenance is also essential to keep systems operating at peak efficiency and prevent energy consumption increasing. Passive techniques such as natural ventilation and secure night cooling can reduce the cooling load further (Carbon Trust guide CTV003, www.carbontrust.co.uk).

Simple strategies – switching off lights and equipment when not being used can yield big benefits. Reducing heating thermostat temperatures by 1ºC can reduce energy consumption by up to 8%. Equipment left on standby during bank holidays and weekends could cost a medium-sized firm almost £6,000 annually, so establish a “carbon cull” to make sure everything is powered down before the last person leaves the office. In extreme cases PCs and monitors can consume up to 70% of the energy in an office, so encourage staff to be responsible with them, as well as with personal heaters and fans and phone chargers.

Where there are large areas of glazing, careful adjustment of blinds can cut down on overheating while still allowing diffuse sunlight to enter the building, minimising the need for artificial lighting (Carbon Trust guide CTV007, www.carbontrust.co.uk).

Good switching arrangements can simplify the process: pieces of communal equipment can be “grouped” using a multi-plug adaptor, and then switched off at the wall to ensure nothing gets missed (the same principle can be applied to each workstation).

For such strategies to work, all staff need to give their support. A good idea is to appoint environmental “champions”. They can make sure things are getting done, and provide a useful link between management and employees. Such strategies will also decrease running costs and increase profitability.

It pays to make things easier for building occupants by installing automated systems where appropriate. For example, the use of daylight sensors will mean the lights automatically switch off if there is an adequate level of natural daylight. Occupancy sensors will help reduce demand in communal areas such as toilets and hallways, where nobody feels it is their role to turn the lights off. And because most office equipment is constantly on during the daytime, make sure sleep modes are activated.

To go further still, consider replacing office equipment and lighting with more efficient models modern lighting can use as much as 75% less energy and adding smart metering which highlights real-time energy consumption, allowing you to identify areas of the building where equipment has been left running.

Another option is to carry out renovation work on the building itself. Ventilation and infiltration are responsible for 35% of heat loss, so it makes sense to improve building airtightness first. Insulating cavity walls and roof spaces will help to maintain a steady internal temperature, potentially saving hundreds of pounds. Simply adding 300mm of mineral wool to an uninsulated loft will pay for itself in two years.

Windows are responsible for the next greatest percentage heat loss (26%), and large areas of glazing increase heat loss and heighten cooling load, so consider investing in low-E or solar control glass, or cheaper stick-on films. For more information, see GIL122 – Building Fabric (www.carbontrust.co.uk).

Another route to saving CO2 is to fuel switch – either to green tariff electricity or to renewables. Switching to a green tariff is worthwhile, but make sure that it’s of guaranteed origin and represents new renewables capacity, above and beyond the power companies’ legal obligation to produce a certain percentage of power from renewable sources.

Offsetting

Even when you’ve renovated your building, adopted good environmental management techniques and got your staff on board, the office will still be emitting some carbon. At this point, offsetting becomes the logical next step.

Offsetting is still a young industry and has been criticised for a lack of both transparency and robustness. To address this, providers are improving their methodologies. Offsetting certainly has a role to play after energy reduction strategies have been implemented, so for peace of mind use a government-accredited provider, and only invest in offset schemes with potential to create lasting carbon reductions.

Practical steps

Developing an action plan can help you turn your carbon audit findings into appropriate practical action the Carbon Trust provides an online bespoke Action Plan Tool (www.carbontrust.co.uk)

For a comprehensive assessment of your office energy use, the Carbon Trust produces a tool that allows you to compare your actual energy use with the benchmarks tailored to your business operation – see http://217.10.129.104/Energy_Benchmarking/Offices/default.asp)

If you want to go the whole hog, apply for accreditation under a recognised scheme such as ISO 14001, or the Eco Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS). These will help you develop and implement an environmental management system based on internationally recognised standards. Bear in mind that for SMEs this may be overly time-consuming other standards such as the Business and Environment Management Scheme (BEMS) offer a stepped approach that may be more feasible.

For more in-depth carbon reporting methodology try the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, a widely recognised international accounting tool (www.ghgprotocol.org).

Toby Balson, a consultant in the Low Carbon Housing Team at the BRE, can be contacted at balsont@bre.co.uk