Tips to create a more energy-efficient office

Avoiding energy waste

Avoiding energy waste is more important than ever due to the energy crisis in the UK, which means businesses are facing a huge increase in their bills. Energy wastage is prevalent across industries, but with prices increasing higher than ever before, it’s in an employer’s best interest to begin thinking about where they can reduce costs. Not only does this benefit you financially, but it has a positive impact on the environment, too. 

It’s the simple things that will save you money, with a huge emphasis on control and management. If you monitor your current energy output you will soon realise where you’re overusing your resources, so keep a sharp eye and make changes where you need to.

Securing energy instead of releasing it without any thought can have a huge cost effect on your business. Flogging money away on energy waste is not ideal short and long term, so it’s crucial you savour your energy. 

Read on for our top tips on how to avoid energy waste.

Invest in energy-efficient office lighting

One of the biggest energy expenditures at work is lighting in the office. We use and rely on lights daily in an office to ensure employees can have great visibility within the environment, but there are ways in which we can reduce how much this office essential costs. By swapping out your regular lights for LED lightint, you may just see the benefit of this reflected on your energy bill. LEDs are the most efficient lighting available and on average they use 75% less electricity than a regular bulb.

LED lighting has the ability to match the same output as a regular bulb but with less wattage, which means they’re guaranteed to save you money in the long term. It’s affordable for any employer to purchase and you will start to see results sooner than you think. After every year, you could make significant savings over the years whilst also improving the lighting in the office – providing your employees with a better working environment.

The highly productive working environment created by LED lighting can also reduce your carbon footprint. It’s energy efficient which gives you the ability to lower your energy consumption and it can run on renewable electricity. 

Monitor the heating and air conditioning

Overusing the air conditioning and heating is a simple mistake many businesses make as we rely on it all year for different seasons. During the spring and summer months temperatures can reach sweltering highs, and through winter the climate can drop below freezing. It’s obvious that we need the heating or aircon one way or another, but monitoring its usage is the challenge employers face.

Heating and air conditioning is crucial to ensuring your employees are comfortable in the workplace, but it’s crucial to find the perfect balance, whilst also considering how this can affect your energy output in the office. To become more energy efficient, we suggest you regularly monitor the usage of each and measure its necessity of it.

Monitoring how often you use it will give a clear indication of whether you’re wasting energy or not. It’s difficult during the summer as the aircon needs to be on quite often, however, if you keep the windows closed or blinds down during the weekend or once the working day has finished – then naturally the office will feel much cooler in the morning. Therefore you shouldn’t need to have the air conditioning running for quite as long.

Similar to summer, winter can be a challenge as it will always be cold first thing in the morning upon arrival at the office. Turn the heating on for a couple of hours to increase the warmth so that when employees arrive they will feel toasty and comfortable. After the office has warmed up you can turn the heating off as the workspace should naturally heat up due to the number of people in the area. Frequent monitoring of your heating and cooling systems can be a huge cost-saving exercise that many businesses overlook.

Turn electrics off in the office

A big culprit in energy waste for an office is electrical devices being turned on when not in use. An office relies on electricity for everyday purposes such as lighting and computers, but these things don’t need to be switched on 24 hours a day. If your equipment is frequently left running during the night or at the weekends, it’s time to make a change

Due to an increase in energy bills, it’s important we begin taking note of the money being wasted on electricals that are not in use. So, to begin taking action we strongly encourage you to start turning electricals off at the end of the day and at weekends so you’re saving a significant amount of energy.

The simplest way to tackle this is by reminding your employees to power down their equipment at the end of the day, ensuring they know how this helps towards energy cost savings for the business.

If you have enjoyed our tips to create a more energy-efficient office, get in touch today to let us know your thoughts on the matter!

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