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Reducing energy usage at work - sooth your professional CO₂nscience

Businesses have become pretty savvy over the past few years regarding the impact that energy consumption can have on their bottom line. But high-profile companies are now having to work harder to satisfy their customers who are more fickle than ever and perfectly willing to switch to another company if its reputation is considered 'greener'.

There are always articles nowadays about how businesses waste money and need to be more efficient. Here's a selection of recent articles.

• Lazy employees cost businesses dear over PC usage
• Firms urged to cut IT power consumption
• Finance IT guzzles most power

Are you doing all you can to save energy? Consider the following:

• Office Equipment: Switch off office equipment when not in use. Most photocopiers, PCs, printers and similar equipment all have programmable standby modes. Consider shortening the time before a device enters standby. Ensure that office staff switch off equipment at night - apart from saving energy, it also reduces the risk of fire.
• Refreshments: Encourage employees to only boil the water they need for a drink.
• Heat Recovery: Have you implemented heat recovery systems for shopfloor processes? Heat recovery can be implemented for many "hot" processes involving furnaces and kilns, waste water, drying processes, etc. Where sites have computer centres with air conditioning systems that are used continuously, you can install heat recovery systems to supplement central heating.
• Motors and Machinery: Ensure that motors are correctly sized for their duty. Oversized motors run at less than optimum efficiency. Check that belt drives are correctly aligned and tensioned. Check that gearboxes are running at the correct temperature - too hot and you're wasting energy.
• Pumps and Blowers: Ensure that pumps and blowers are running efficiently. Rather than run a pump well below its duty point for any length of time, it's more economical to have two smaller pumps, one running continuously and one used when required.
• Compressors: compressor sets are usually designed to run continuously and cut in and out of compress mode as required. Outside normal shopfloor hours, consider switching compressors off completely. Alternatively, for light overnight demand, install a small compressor to match the required duty and to keep the system charged. Check for leaks in the pipework and fittings. Isolate pipework that is no longer required. Use regulators to supply equipment with air at the correct pressure - supplying at too high a pressure is wasteful.
• Office Lighting: install motion detectors so that lights switch off when there's no one around. Alternatively, re-organise the lighting circuits so that users can switch on only the lights they need. Change bulbs and tubes to high efficiency ones.
• Building heating: if you are planning to upgrade existing, or install new heating systems, consider using ground source heat pumps instead. While expensive to install, they typically produce 4kW of heat for each 1kW of electricity consumed. Service existing heating systems so that they operate efficiently. Where there are water-filled radiators, fit them with thermostatic valves.
• Shopfloor: where shopfloor areas have high ceilings that are not actually necessary, consider installing a lower false ceiling with insulation on top. You can also build stud-walled offices around permanent desk positions on the shop floor.