The best 100 hours of carbon clean up
What can be achieved by devoting 100 hours to carbon clean-up, an hour a day for a hundred days, was demonstrated by the winner of CIBSE’s 100 hours of carbon clean-up campaign last Autumn.
Simons Group moved into its current office building in July 2006, having redesigned and refurbished an existing 1970s office to achieve an energy consumption of 175 kWh/m2, better than CIBSE good practice of an open-plan headquarters.
Its high-profile campaign set out to reduce the group’s CO2 emissions by 17% from a recorded 4900 t for 2007/8 to 4062 t for 2008/9. The scope of the savings includes the head office, other offices, gas and electricity in site office, gas oil on site and fuel purchase.
CIBSE’s campaign spurred the group to install a variable-speed drive and occupancy monitor to control ventilation according to the number of people in the office. In the first two weeks alone, 190 kWh of gas and 159 kWh of electricity were saved. The greatest savings will be in the hottest and coldest months of the year.
All lighting is now controlled by movement and daylight. The doors of meeting rooms are closed to prevent lights being turned on by people passing by. All lights are off at night, and feature lighting now uses low-wattage lamps.
Staff were encouraged to turn off PCs, laptop computers and phone chargers when not in use. Settings of printers and photocopiers were checked, and the energy savings of closing the office on Saturdays considered. The electricity bill for the head office in October was 13% less than in 2006, a saving of 9 MWh and 3.9 t of CO2 against the baseline year.
For site accommodation, the company developed Enviro-cabins with Speedy safe in 2007, halving demand and achieving significant reductions in CO2 when powered by generators.
Carbon saving is an ongoing mission for Simons, and the pace will continue between now and the next CIBSE campaign.
