Make Your Numbers Work for You

Posted by Sophie Collins on Nov 15, 2011 | No Comments

This event was held at Burges Salmon and entitled “make your numbers work for you”. We saw videoed interviews from the Avon Fire Service, Burges Salmon and Wessex Water on their priorities, their challenges, their ambitions and advice for others.

The main issues that were raised in this session were how to measure and get hold of the data and what to do with it. It was also voiced that another difficulty was communicating the data effectively. Here are the tips we came up with after an interesting discussion:

Getting the Data:

Start with measuring your energy use (for most this will be electricity and gas meter readings) as that is where you will find the majority of your CO₂ footprint.
If the meter data is not easily accessible or currently within your service charge, be persistent requesting the information from your landlord. If you still can’t get it, consider metering yourself (there are members who have gone down that route).
Use our calculator to measure your footprint or a sector specific initiative (e.g. Legal Sector Alliance) to get an understanding of the breakdown of your footprint.
Get your data automated (through smart metering) or where possible get someone else to compile your data for you (e.g. for business travel your taxi company, travel agency).
Sub-meter your premises if you want a breakdown of electricity use on your site. If not, use a simple monitor, turn everything off to find out your minimum (e.g. your servers will still be running) and gradually add lighting etc. to see use.
If sub-metering or monitoring is not possible, use sector or building specific assumptions available on the internet. These can provide a good starting point and you can identify the higher areas of spend to be targeted.
Involve the right people. If you’re looking at reducing electricity or gas on site, involve the people that can really make a difference like the security (switch off at night), facilities and maintenance people. Along with installing some of the right technology, you might be able to make more of a difference than trying to get everyone on board.
Use the WECC events and membership to spot similar businesses who have faced similar problems – how did they deal with it?
Technology is advancing all the time: whether it is self-metering, or automated metering services, the chances are the costs are lower than you think and pay-back periods will be relatively short. But again, ask those who have done it for recommendations and advice.
Those organisations that do not employ somebody with a specific environmental role can find it particularly difficult to know where to get started and how to progress. Don’t be overwhelmed by the immensity of it. Try something, get started, get small successes and then try measuring something else. Perhaps concentrate on different areas/appliances or monitoring over time (days of week and weekend, or half-hourly to spot anomalies against work hours).

Using the Data:

Do report back to people, calculate your savings in simple terms, and celebrate successes!
Representing the results graphically can more easily highlight anomalies and target areas for reduction.
Accept that you will need to present your data in different forms to different audiences, both internally and externally, so ensure it is easy to manipulate. Different audiences will have different interests – think in terms of cost savings, higher efficiencies and reputational values.
Share your information in interesting ways e.g. what’s your CO₂ per head? Benchmark yourself against others in your sector.
An easy way to convince sceptics is to calculate the cost of action versus the cost of inaction. How much are you wasting by doing nothing and what could be done with that capital instead?

The issues raised in the event’s discussion touched on many aspects covered in some of the previous WECC events. Some particularly relevant ones can be found here: