From Guest Blogger Ashleigh: Energy Saving Tips for the Office

Worldwide targets to cut down greenhouse emissions are taking hold and businesses have been one of the first communities to feel the urgency of these objectives.

However, the pressure of rising to meet energy targets should not fall solely with top management, but rather everyone in the office can play a significant role in reducing your business’s energy use.

Creating an eco-friendly office environment can be a difficult task without the participation and support of your workforce. It is therefore vital that you encourage your employees to make a few simple changes in order to make your workplace a sustainable one.

Install a smart meter

Smart meters can be fitted for free by energy suppliers. These incredibly clever devices will allow you to monitor how energy is used around the office.

Ensure that you use the information gained from your smart meter to influence your energy saving projects around the office.

Motivate your employees to reach energy saving targets by separating tasks out to individual teams. Not only will your business be in a stronger position to reduce your energy consumption with more people involved, but offering prizes and incentives will appeal to your employees’ sense of competition and ensure that goals are reached in a timely manner.

Power saving mode

Educate your employees on how much energy their computer uses. A desktop computer continuously left on for one year can release more than 1500 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere.

In other words, between 100 and 500 trees would be required in order to balance the amount of CO2 emitted from one computer.

Use this information to highlight the importance of switching computers off at the end of the day to your employees, and stress the importance of only having active devices switched on at all times.

Request that your employees remove screen saver options from their desktops and switch to a hibernate or sleep mode; screensavers use over 100 watts an hour while switching to a sleep mode will reduce this output to 10 watts an hour.

Heating and cooling

The temperature of an office can be a point of contention at the best of times, but it is easier than you think to naturally heat and cool a working environment.

During the cooler months, ensure that curtains and blinds on East facing windows are kept open, while windows that let in very little sunlight are kept covered. This will contribute solar heat to your interiors and prevent heat from escaping.

At warmers points in the year, close curtains and blinds to block direct sunlight, this will stop the magnifying effect which heats stuffy offices and enable you to turn air conditioning units to a lower setting and reduce your energy output.

Unplug electrical devices

Many people are unaware that some electrical devices continue to draw power when they are plugged in, even if they are switched off.

Encourage your staff to unplug devices and appliances which are not being used, such as scanners, printers and spare computers. Chargers are also a big offender for using energy when idle, so it is crucial that staff are regularly reminded to ensure laptop and mobile chargers are unplugged from sockets when they have finished using them.

Whilst reducing your carbon emissions can appear to be another objective to add to a long list, introducing energy awareness policies to the routine running of your business can help you do more than hit Government targets.

Once you have implemented energy saving strategies, pay close attention to how much you are saving on your utility bills. Share these numbers with your staff and maybe even the savings by providing lunch or organising a team activity, as an incentive for them to help make the office a more sustainable environment.

Installing good energy ethics in the workplace can even have an effect on your employees’ personal lives. Most families want to reduce their carbon footprint but are not armed with the right information to get the ball rolling. By employing carbon saving strategies in the workplace you could affect the way your employees use energy outside of work, saving them and their household money.

Ashleigh Harman is a Digital Content Writer for Project Lower, the energy experts dedicated to providing businesses with lower energy bills.