Richard writes:
Recent energy usage initiatives have resulted in savings to VGC.
These savings represent money, and also a smaller carbon footprint. And they support our ISO50001 Energy Management accreditation.
Electricity
Our total electricity usage for 2017 was slightly up over 2016 – however, we have had an increase in staff numbers in the offices. When the increased numbers in the offices over the same period is taken into account, our kilowatt hours per person fell.
This was achieved by reminding people to turn off lights and other electrical equipment when not needed. It should further decrease with the recent upgrade of our head office to LED ceiling lights.
Fuel
Our fuel usage per vehicle decreased.
We saw a decrease in total fleet fuel usage, measured as number of vehicles divided by total fuel purchased.
This is attributed to several factors.
- upgrading our fleet with more economical vehicles
- e-learning on driving behaviours as part of our FORS accreditation
- vehicle sharing when possible
- planning routes for both distance and time
- looking at driving behaviours and other in-car cleverness technology.
We have also reduced travel by using Lync, Skype and video conferencing between our Canning Town, Ruislip and Salford offices. We hope to encourage even more use of these technologies to avoid unnecessary travel.
Going forward
We will continue to replace the vehicle fleet with fuel-efficient vehicles and plan works to facilitate vehicle sharing.
We are hoping to achieve a 2% reduction over 2018 in kilowatt hours per person in the offices.
This will be by such things as better education over unplugging devices that are not needed, such as mobile phone chargers, auxiliary screens and laptops. We will also reduce the hot water tap temperature by a couple of degrees.
We are looking into sun blinds at Cardinal House to help keep the office temperatures more stable and save heating and air-conditioning.
