Climate Action - Assisting business towards carbon neutrality

Improving the efficiency of your buildings, computers, cars and products is the fastest and most lucrative way to save money, energy and carbon emissions. This does not mean going without. Energy efficiency is about increasing productivity but doing more with less. More efficient buildings, cars and products are a direct and lasting contribution to limiting carbon emissions and many energy efficient products cost no more than inefficient ones.

Simple is effective

It’s important to realise that very simple measures can lead to immediate savings. Just turning off unused lights, motors, computers and space heating can substantially reduce wasted energy. In one of their distribution facilities, Staples, the world’s biggest suppliers of office products, replaced conventional conveyor belt motors with high efficiency soft start motors and sensors to turn off lighting and fans when parts of the building were unoccupied. The result was a US$100,000/yr saving in electricity – a pay back of less than 12 months.

Energy efficiency improves the bottom line but it also yields even more valuable side benefits:

• Higher quality and reliability in energy efficient factories.
• Six to 16 per cent higher labour productivity in efficient offices.
• Forty per cent higher sales in stores skilfully designed to be illuminated primarily by daylight.

Revenue generated from increased productivity can be 10 times as high as the energy cost savings received from performing upgrades. Every dollar invested in an energy efficient upgrade can produce between US$2 and US$3 in increased asset value, which can make commercial properties more attractive to buyers and lenders.

Office equipment and appliances

Because of their rapid turnover, office equipment and other appliances, such as refrigerators, can be a potent source of wasted money from unnecessary energy use and consequently greenhouse gas emissions. Computers, copiers and printers come in many different configurations that can either reduce or increase operating expenses. Generally, laptop computers use less energy than desktop computers and LCD monitors less energy than CRT screens. Any large organisation that relies on computing can substantially reduce electricity bills and carbon emissions by simply using the energy saving mode when the computer is not in use. This is generally a very quick and easy action with an almost immediate payback.

There is also the issue of what to do with equipment when it is finished with its useful life, referred to as ‘e-waste’. Procurement guidelines that stipulate energy efficiency and product take back or recycling create the most resource savings and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

For appliances, the Energy Star rating is a way to describe the efficiency of products; the more stars, the more efficient they are. For many brands now, the highest energy efficiency rating – four or five stars – does not cost any more than products with few stars. Originally from the US, Energy Star is now applicable in Europe.

In 2007, the Energy Star guidelines were upgraded. Called Energy Star 4.0, the standard raises the bar for manufacturers of desktops, notebooks, tablets, workstations and low end servers. The new standard requires computing devices to switch their displays into sleep mode and reduces the amount of electricity needed for standby and sleep modes.

Move electrons, not people 

Telecommuting

Travel to attend meetings and conferences is expensive, time consuming and often unpleasant. Modern communications equipment has relieved some of this burden. Emails have replaced letters and the mobile phone has saved time, money and hassle. Modern advances in technology, particularly web and video conferencing, mean the time is quickly approaching when the need to travel will be substantially diminished.

Consider a two day business trip to attend a meeting 1,000 km (600 miles) away. Physical travel costs about US$2,000 per person when accommodation, travel and meals are included, while a video conference costs about US$200. The savings are US$1,800 and about half a tonne of carbon. For medium size company, Lawson, the savings from employing web conferencing via WebEx in its Global Support Center saved the company US$600,000 per year, for an ROI in excess of 700 per cent.

Telecommuting can also be both a winner for the bottom line and the environment. With the average commute of nearly 12,000 kilometres a year, a study by the Telework Coalition found that if 32 million Americans who could telecommute did so one day a week, they would not:

• Drive around two billion kilometres – a distance equal to 51,000 times round the Earth.
• Waste US$100 million from buying an unnecessary 300 million litres of petrol.

Additionally, telecommuters gain the equivalent of 32 million extra hours every week for leisure, family or work, which would provide a US$300 billion bottom line benefit to the economy every year.

Whether it is environmental improvements or productivity gains as the principle outcome of teleworking and teleconferencing, it seems one supports the other. AT&T has found, for example, its teleworking programme has helped staff save time, petrol and pollution, and helped the company to slash its annual real estate costs by US$30 million and gain US$150 million in extra hours of productive work from teleworkers. An important secondary benefit is that the teleworking programme also lowers training and staff costs, as teleworkers are much less likely to switch jobs than in office staff.

The German data processing company, SVI, evaluated the benefits and costs of a teleworking pilot and found that for a set-up cost of around €5,500, plus monthly running costs of €120-225 per person, the benefits were at least three to four times greater than these costs and included:

• Technology savings of €1,200-1,300 per person at work.
• Increased productivity of 2-5 per cent per year.
• Reduction of sick leave by an average of two days annually.
• Savings in recruitment and training costs because of increased staff retention.

British Telecom used video conferencing technology to replace nearly 900,000 face to face meetings in one year. The company has saved £135 million for travel and travel allowances and £103 million for time saved. This represents a 2,500 per cent return in just 12 months. They also saved 97,000 tonnes of CO2. That’s good business, and good for the environment. The company is working with others under the Global e-Sustainability Initiative of UNEP and industry partners to further examine opportunities related to climate action and improved use of information and communications technology.

Lighten up

For an average office building or factory, lighting makes up about 15-20 per cent of total electricity use. Converting coal at the power plant into incandescent light in your facility, however, is only three per cent efficient.

Compact fluorescent lights, also called simply CFLs, have evolved rapidly in the past decade. They now last between six and 15 years, depending on which product you choose, and reduce electricity use by a minimum of 75 per cent compared to a standard incandescent bulb. What’s more, CFL emits much less heat than incandescent bulbs, creating a double benefit by reducing energy consumption from air-conditioners. Because they emit less heat, they are also safer to use in confined areas. New designs can replace hot halogen bulbs and be operated on dimmers.

The advantages of CFLs and other high efficiency lighting have prompted legislation to ban incandescent bulbs. In 2007, Australia is the first country to mandate that no incandescent bulbs will be sold in Australia by 2012, a move that will reduce emissions by four million tonnes and cut power bills for lighting by up to 66 per cent.

CFLs certainly use less energy than traditional incandescent lights, but  free sunlight is even better. Prince Street Technologies, a subdivision of Interface Carpets, relocated its factory into a new building with 32 skylights providing excellent natural lighting. The energy bills were less, but more interestingly, after three years, workers’ compensation cases had dropped from 20 per year to less than one, saving between US$100,000 and US$200,000 each year.

Money in the tank

For many businesses, the vehicle fleet is a major capital outlay and operating expense. Despite more than a century of refinement, however, the modern car remains astonishingly inefficient. Just six per cent of the fuel energy actually accelerates the car, and all this energy converts to brake heating when the car stops. And, because 95 per cent of the accelerated mass is the car itself, less than one per cent of the fuel ends up moving the driver. It’s important to choose the most efficient vehicle that meets your needs. Smaller and lighter vehicles not only cost less to buy and run, they do so without compromising safety. Already auto manufacturers are voluntarily producing or planning to produce cars with tailpipe emissions significantly lower than conventional vehicles and there are moves to tax fuels based on their carbon content.

New vehicle designs, such as hybrids and advanced diesel designs, offer excellent fuel economy and life cycle costs. With oil prices increasing, there is already some market pressure to increase efficiency, but often tax codes work against this through higher deductions for larger engines. This confusing signal can be countered by company procurement guidelines that stipulate either fuel economy or tailpipe emissions of carbon dioxide.

Teleconference super saver

Bell Canada, has focused on climate change to drive teleconferencing, saving 142,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually from more than 2.7 million teleconferences of their customers. The company has also conducted a Climate Protection Programme for several years, including a programme called Everyday Kyoto for employees that aims to reduce the emissions of company operations. By allowing more than 15,000 of their employees to telecommute, the company has saved 6,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually.

The more energy stars a product has, the more efficient it is.

Efficiency pays

Over the decade from 1995-2005, chemical manufacturer DuPont boosted production by nearly 30 per cent but cut energy use by seven per cent and greenhouse gas emissions by 72 per cent (measured in terms of their carbon dioxide equivalent), saving more than US$2 billion. Five other major firms, IBM, British Telecom, Alcan, NorskeCanada and Bayer, have collectively saved at least another US$2 billion since the early 1990s by reducing their carbon emissions by more than 60 per cent. In 2001, oil giant BP met its 2010 goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions 10 per cent below the company’s 1990 level, thereby cutting its energy bills US$650 million over 10 years. General Electric has vowed to raise its energy efficiency 30 per cent by 2012 to enhance the company’s shareholder value.

Better buildings through performance contracts

Upgrading the energy performance of buildings can be done using performance contracts. Siemens, for example, will upgrade buildings, promising prescribed amounts of energy and monetary savings. If there is a shortfall, the difference is made up by Siemens, while better than expected results are shared with the building operator. Siemens has reported total worldwide savings of nine million tonnes of CO2 and one billion Euros.